French MPs back constitutional reforms

PARIS

French parliamentarians have backed a package of constitutional amendments that includes extending the country’s state of emergency and strengthening controversial “anti-terrorism” powers, ahead of a looming cabinet reshuffle.

The draft ‘Protection of the Nation’ law aims at including the state of emergency in the constitution as well as stripping citizenship from all French nationals convicted of terrorist offenses. This is instead of axing citizenship from convicted terrorists with dual nationalities, as initially conceived.

Lawmakers at the National Assembly passed the law Wednesday evening by 317 votes to 199.

The package was proposed as part of a set of measures by President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls in the wake of the Paris Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people.

Meanwhile, the French Senate on Tuesday passed a separate bill to extend the current state of emergency -- which expires on Feb.26 -- for a further three months.

MPs at the National Assembly, France's lower house, approved late Tuesday a controversial measure of withdrawing French citizenship, that saw the former justice minister Christiane Taubira walking away from the government.

The measure was passed by 162 votes to 148 with 22 abstentions.

It is not clear how the measure will be technically applied, as a French national cannot render someone stateless, according to the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Noting that a much higher proportion of French citizens of dual nationality come from a migrant background, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said last week it feared "that some native-born French citizens are being treated as second-class citizens".

"Stripping French-born citizens of their citizenship could force people into exile from the only country they have ever known," HRW added.

On Monday, the Assembly, with some 411 MPs absent, also voted to include a four-month renewable state of emergency in the constitution by 103 votes to 26.

The package will next be forwarded to the Senate -- the upper house -- for discussion and vote. It needs a three-fifths majority of Congress -- the body formed when both houses meet at the Palace of Versailles to vote on revisions to the constitution -- to be fully implemented.

Following the tight vote on the revoking of citizenship, French media have cast doubts whether the package will be passed.

Several national and international human rights bodies have continually criticized France’s state of emergency and it measures.

HRW and Amnesty International issued reports last week pointing to effects of the state of emergency which have been especially felt by the French Muslim community; the organizations have called for its suspension.