06 November 2020
A new paper published by the Transnational Institute examines how France's state of emergency - originally declared in November 2015 as a temporary, exceptional measure - has become permanent, and the effects on individual rights.
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When a Temporary State of Emergency becomes Permanent: France as a Case Study (TNI, link):
"In November 2015, France declared a State of Emergency as an immediate response to two violent attacks in Paris causing the deaths of 130 people and injuring close to five hundred others, 100 of them seriously. Although states of emergency, as enshrined in law, are conceived as temporary measures to return to a “normal” state of affairs as soon as possible, in the French example, the declared state of emergency was extended five times, until November 2017, when many of the emergency powers and measures were codified and written in to ordinary law. In effect, restrictions introduced during the temporary state of emergency became permanent.
This framing paper details the international legal framework that underpins the establishment of a state of emergency and uses France as a case study to show how a state of emergency was introduced and repeatedly extended before eventually becoming permanent."
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