The vote was acquired by 307 votes – including the PS group – against 27, only the ecologist groups and CRCE with a communist majority having opposed it. It will soon be the turn of the deputies to peel this sovereign text.
“Like Voltaire’s Candide, you have cultivated the garden of the police well, but there is still a lot to clear in the gardens of justice and criminal procedure before everything goes for the best in the best of all possible worlds”, launched the co-rapporteur LR Marc-Philippe Daubresse (North), to the address of the minister.
Essentially, the bill provides for an additional 15 billion euros in the budget over five years, of which “more than half, 8 billion, devoted to cyber and digital”, indicated the minister.
8,500 police and gendarme positions must be created, including “3,000 from 2023”, according to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
As France prepares to host two major sporting events – the Rugby World Cup and the Olympic Games – 11 new units of mobile forces “specialized in rapid intervention” will be created. And, to ensure security in rural areas, 200 gendarmerie brigades.
To combat ever-increasing cybercrime, the bill allows seizures of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.
Regarding “ransomware” – ransom demands after a cyberattack -, it conditions reimbursement by insurance companies on the filing of a complaint by the victim.
Major addition by senators: the penalties incurred for refusal to comply, urban rodeos and violence against elected officials will be increased. “It is necessary that the means on the ground can follow the very severity of the law that we vote here”, warned the centrist co-rapporteur Loïc Hervé.
The text also provides for more severe penalties for sexist insult and includes several measures to simplify criminal procedure.
The principle of the tort fixed fine will be extended to 25 new offences.
Socialist amendments aim to facilitate the reception and access to online procedures for victims with disabilities.
– “Law of numbers” –
“We do not like everything, and this is an understatement, in this Lopmi (…), but the demand for security expressed by our fellow citizens (…) convinced us to vote in favor of this text and the means additional that it allocates to our police forces”, declared the socialist Jérôme Durain.
The president of the CRCE group, Eliane Assassi, on the other hand, castigated “a law of figures, of staff”, which “does not look at the human, on the relationship between citizens and the police, citizens and public service”.
“We have clearly perceived the continuity of a policy which is intended to be more repressive than protective, which burdens the links with citizens, causing or aggravating a breach of trust”, added the ecologist Guy Benarroche.
The controversial reform of the judicial police, mentioned in the report annexed to the bill but of a regulatory nature, was one of the main points of debate which took place last week in the hemicycle.
Mr. Darmanin tried to calm the spirits by assuring once again that the magistrates “will always have the immense and entire responsibility for the investigations”.
The day after a new day of mobilization of hundreds of investigators against this reform project, Mr. Durain played the card of mischief on Tuesday: “To bring the PJ into the police stations, it’s like putting an end to the blockages in the (fuel) depots, it will be necessary to negotiate,” he said.
The question of domestic violence also gave rise to heated exchanges under pressure from Laurence Rossignol, the minister like the rapporteurs believing that Lopmi was not intended to reform the Civil Code.
