The CFDT and the CGT accuse the “threats-payers” bill of infringing the right to demonstrate

The two largest French unions, the CFDT and the CGT, denounced in separate press releases on Thursday, October 29, the “thugs-payers” bill as an obstacle to the freedom to demonstrate. In its flagship measure, the bill adopted and expanded by the Senate after the damage committed on the sidelines of the social protest movement of October 17, creates financial solidarity for any person who has "knowingly participated" in a group formed with a view to committing damage or for those who remain in a "gathering" likely to disturb public order, despite two summons from the police.

The CFDT is concerned about a project “the first draft of which already infringed on the freedom to demonstrate and which was further tightened during its examination in the Senate”. “There is no point in further weakening public freedoms to fight against thugs,” according to the first union, which notes that the text “also crosses new worrying thresholds.”

A contested collective responsibility

The CFDT denounces in particular the desire to allow "the seizure of family or housing allowances (APL)", to "burden an entire family with the facts alleged against one of its members", or the possibility of sentencing to "a sentence of 6 months' imprisonment for simple participation in a prohibited demonstration, even in the absence of violence, where the existing law only targeted the organizer of the demonstration".

For the CGT, “this law aims above all to scare peaceful demonstrators who could find themselves near areas of degradation”. “Collective responsibility will be the principle, without link to the violent offense or the alleged damage, going against the founding principles of the rule of law,” according to its press release published Wednesday.