Philippe Bilger: why the law of moralization is a danger for freedom of expression 

Honorary magistrate, president of the Institut de la parole, Philippe Bilger was for more than twenty years Advocate General at the Court of Assizes of Paris. Author of many books, he maintains the blog Justice in the singular and just published The word, just her (ed. by Cerf, 2017).

Who can be stupid enough, cynical enough or suicidal enough to oppose a project to moralize public life even if it is not the first and will undoubtedly not be the last?

We cannot decently oppose the fact that there is goodwill, sincerity and genuine concern for ethics in the government's intentions. That they are not totally pure, I admit, but the inspiration is positive.

The presentation of this law for discussion in the National Assembly was clumsy. As if it were a question of globally incriminating the political class by putting everyone in the same bag. The majority of elected officials who are impeccable and exercise a beautiful and difficult job in the service of the community and the few who have led astray. The consequence is that this requirement of moral rectitude, which should be obvious, is contested not because it would be shocking in itself but because of the confusion it risks creating between the mass of the best and the few worst. .

Moreover, the government very quickly realized to its detriment that purity is difficult to find and is sometimes a desperate search. There are shadowy pasts and questionable presents. This banality only becomes detrimental when the power that claims to be a paragon of virtue in all registers is itself caught up in contradictions that show that it has no more lessons to give than his opponents.

There is a long way, moreover, between the abstraction of even the most honorable and best drafted text there is and the parliamentary debate which will enrich or degrade it, in any case show all the details and the pitfalls that A convenient generality had necessarily eluded. From the moment the project was put on the parliamentary table without the slightest bad faith being imputed to senators and deputies, naturally obstacles, inconsistencies, even impossibilities appeared which made the text less and less operational. and which in practice would have prevented the elect from correctly accomplishing their mission. It is too easy to tax them with corporatism and an abusive defense of their privileges when, for example, for the reimbursement of expenses or the parliamentary reserve (which will be abolished like the ministerial reserve), the law had failed to examine , in its initial wording, the infinite number of elements that could be objected to. Realism is not shameful when it puts ideology or naivety in their place.

The debate in the National Assembly did not deserve either, for provisions whose public interest no one disputes, to be so badly directed and chaired. At the risk of making them fall into ridicule that would make them lose all credit before their time. The freshness of LREM, when it turns, out of ignorance, into amateurism and refers to an erratic approach, no longer represents a gift for democracy. But a load. Let's paraphrase Chamfort: it's a great advantage to have done nothing, but it shouldn't be abused!

The deplorable consequence of a parliamentary group that is both dominant and never intelligently critical, with a Minister of Justice who validates everything in the name of conformist progressivism, is that we end up with aberrations or dangers with regard to the very original spirit of the project.

Having repudiated the obligation of a criminal record: nothing, maintaining the fiscal “lock” of Bercy – the emberlificotées explanations of Bruno Le Maire on France Info will not change anything in this harmful blockage – constitute serious errors.

Having, on the other hand, voted for the principle of ineligibility not only for offenses of an economic and financial nature but for offenses relating to freedom of expression represents a danger for the Republic. As long as a power enslaves its justice and wants to get rid of intruders, it will have at its disposal, with this amendment, enough to feed its malfeasance.

It is however necessary, in spite of the excesses which affect the image of a quinquennium which obviously aspired to better on the parliamentary level, to continue to support this will to moralize the public life. The kernel, the essential are necessary. Provided that we stop constituting a democratic advance acceptable and accepted by almost all in a sword of Damocles which would have the ambition to frighten and to caporalize in an indistinct way.

It is not enough to invoke ethics to make a good law. She is the light that illuminates but the substance does not depend on her.

On the move has the right to stop and reflect. To vote.