The deputies begin Monday the examination of a project of the government to reform the powers of the customs, and to reinforce sanctions against the traffic of tobacco, in order to answer in particular a warning shot of the Constitutional Council.
At the origin of this text, already adopted in the Senate in May, a decision of the Elders on September 22, who declared the laconic article 60 of the customs code contrary to the Constitution.
The latter provides that, with a view to the search for fraud, its agents may carry out inspections of goods, means of transport and persons. The Council decided that it did not sufficiently detail the applicable framework, and gave the executive until September 1, 2023 to rewrite the article.
The bill gives customs officers the full right to search goods and people in the border zone, and in what is called the customs radius zone (40 km inside the territory beyond the border strip).
This right also extends to ports, airports, and railway and bus stations with international services, and in the vicinity of these places.
On the rest of the territory, the excavation will have to be motivated. Customs must inform the public prosecutor in advance, who may oppose it, or have plausible reasons to suspect an offense or an attempt to commit an offence.
The visit may take the form of a pat-down, a search of clothing and luggage, but not a body search, except in the case of customs detention.
The text was adopted without major changes in the Senate dominated by the right.
In the Assembly, the left fears potential deviations, and the RN deputies a weakening of the power of customs.
The power of action of the customs is preserved, insists with AFP one of the rapporteurs, Elodie Jacquier-Laforge (MoDem), calling not to move the cursor of the text too much to remain in the nails of the Constitutional Council.
In committee, the left also denounced a lack of means, and criticized the planned creation of an operational reserve of the customs administration, rather than an increase in staff.
The bill also plans to expand the use of drones at borders against tobacco trafficking. An experiment is scheduled to extend the retention of data from automated license plate readers (LAPI), to a maximum of four months.
The stated objective is to fight against go-fast and to highlight action patterns of traffickers, but opponents of the measure are worried about disproportionate invasions of privacy.