Presumption of self-defence: the bill not put to a vote in the National Assembly
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In the National Assembly, a bill establishing a presumption of self-defence for police officers and gendarmes when they use their weapons was not put to a vote, as the debates ran beyond the time allotted for its examination.
On 20 January, the National Assembly examined a bill seeking to establish a “presumption of self-defence” for police officers and gendarmes. The text provided that the use of weapons would be presumed lawful whenever an officer is in a situation where the law authorises it: it would no longer fall to the officer who injured or killed someone to show that they had good reason to fire, but to prosecutors to establish, where relevant, that opening fire was unlawful.
Sponsored by the Les Républicains group, the bill was supported by the government and by the Interior Minister, Laurent Nuñez. During a debate in the Assembly on 8 January, he had argued that the text was an “important means of protecting police officers and gendarmes, who can sometimes find themselves in police custody after a police or gendarmerie operation”. The Alliance Police nationale union had welcomed this position.
Several organisations – the Ligue des droits de l’homme, the Syndicat des avocats de France, and the Syndicat de la magistrature – had, on the contrary, denounced in a joint statement a text that in their view constituted a “serious infringement of the right to life” and ran counter to the “principle of equality of all before the law”. In the end, the bill was not put to a vote: the left-wing groups piled up points of order, suspensions of the sitting and sub-amendments, pushing the debate past midnight, the deadline for a vote.