The bronca had been total. A few days after being adopted by the deputies, amendment 2bis of the law on the security and protection of local elected officials was withdrawn, Wednesday February 27, during the conclusive joint committee (CMP). Establishing an extended limitation period (from three months to one year) for insult and defamation against local elected officials or candidates for office, the text was introduced by senators in October 2023, without publicity or prior debate.
It was during its examination at the National Assembly that it was discovered by the Association of lawyers practicing press law and journalists’ unions (SNJ, SNJ-CGT, CFDT-Journalistes, SGJ-FO) , provoking the unanimous condemnation of the profession, representatives of press publishers included (Alliance of the general information press, Syndicate of the independent online information press, Syndicate of magazine press editors, etc.).
Parliamentarians “seek to grant themselves exorbitant protection under common law, at the cost of a damaging attack on the 1881 law on freedom of the press”a collective of companies of national media journalists protested, while the inter-union recalled that the text would have seriously modified “one of the most protective laws for freedom of expression, the freedom to inform and to be informed”.
Round table
“The writing of this article modified the 1881 law on freedom of the press, and clashed with the practices of professionals, whose means of exercising must be preserved”recognizes the North MP Violette Spillebout (Renaissance), rapporteur of the text, in a press release.
As early as February 7, the MP committed to receiving the parties concerned at a round table, at the end of which, on February 14, she announced that she would propose the withdrawal of the problematic amendment in CMP – despite the attachment expressed by the Association of Mayors of France. “The training of local elected officials for access to their rights in terms of reaction to insults, outrages, defamation, as well as the legislative tools to identify and sanction the authors of these acts committed online, as well as to regulate the platforms, will be at the heart of our subsequent debates on the status of local elected officials”she now says.