25/05/2021
The Molac law on the protection and promotion of the regional languages of France
For those who still think that France is a great democracy
The Molac law rejected by the constitutional council composed of 9 individuals after a botched study, in contradiction with 500 parliamentarians who voted in favour of the law and 135 against, after a two-year parliamentary process
The anti-democratic justification used to destroy a law legally voted by the French parliament on April 8 is of the same ilk as the justifications put forward by the Belarusian government of the autocrat Lukashenko to try to explain the hijacking of a civilian plane carrying a peaceful opponent to this dictatorship.
France-Belarus same fight!
The deep state is now being pushed into a corner. The mobilisation must go on!
European Free Alliance
Conseil constitutionnel
Analysis of the Constitutional Council's ruling - text taken from the website of the collective: "Pour que vivent nos langues" (So that our languages live)
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THE FULL STORY OF AN ILLEGAL PSEUDO-DEMOCRATIC SCAM
A political decision by the Constitutional Council? Detailed analysis of the partial censure against the Molac law.
Paul Molac's bill on the protection of the heritage of regional languages and their promotion, which was finally adopted on 8 April 2021, aimed to strengthen the legislative framework for the preservation and promotion of these languages from a heritage and linguistic point of view. Until now, the legislative framework, with the exception of the specific provisions for Corsica and the Overseas Territories, has not made it possible to curb the constantly falling number of speakers. Parliamentary work, by enriching the text during the shuttle between the two assemblies, has made it possible to adopt a law with ambitious content.
However, a referral initiated under surprising conditions (I), which the Constitutional Council declared admissible (II) in a manifestly opportune manner, enabled it to pronounce a poorly reasoned and highly questionable decision of principle (III) through its own interpretation of Article 2 of the Constitution, leaving only a constitutional revision (IV) as the only way out in order to ensure a secure legal framework for the preservation and promotion of regional languages.
I - The origin and troubled content of the referral: a disguised pretext
For Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, immersion teaching was the red line in the text. This is a deep ideological feeling of rejection on his part with regard to the provision of Article 4, which he could not decently implement. After having tried in vain to have this provision withdrawn from the text, the Minister therefore managed to have the matter referred to the Constitutional Council in incredible circumstances, since neither the President of the Republic nor the Prime Minister had made use of their power of referral.
It was therefore necessary for Minister Blanquer to use a manoeuvre so that the Constitutional Council could be seized. In this operation, the participation of the President of the Republic is obvious: the latter has, for once, let the promulgation deadline run until the 23rd of April. With the help of Aurore Bergé, members of the majority were urgently asked via Telegram messaging to support an appeal which, they were told, would only aim to call into question the principle of financing private schools. They were told that the request came from the Minister, and that it was "discussed with the group". These MPs then hastily transmitted an electronic signature.
The appeal, hastily drafted by an adviser to the Minister, raises many questions. How is it possible that an adviser to the Minister can draft a text with the "National Assembly" logo on its header? How is it that the arguments raised in the application are so poorly reasoned, even incoherent? If we add the spelling mistakes and vocabulary errors, it appears that this hastily drafted appeal was in fact only a pretext.
This reading is reinforced by the fact that the Government, in its observations in brief, published as an annex to the decision, criticises the grounds for the appeal and proposes that the Constitutional Council reject it. In reality, it is hard to believe in the sincerity of the Government when it suggests rejecting an appeal that was initiated by one of its ministers with the consent of the President of the Republic, an appeal that was expressly drafted by the cabinet of one of its members.
In fact, the Government states in the last paragraph of its memorandum what appears to be its real intention with regard to the members of the Constitutional Council:
"The complaint made by the appellants that, firstly, having regard to the terms of Article 2 of the Constitution, according to which "the language of the Republic is French" and from which it follows, in particular, according to your case law, that the use of a language other than French cannot be imposed on pupils in public education establishments, either in the life of the establishment or in the teaching of subjects other than that of the language in question (Decision No. 2001-456 DC of 27 December 2001, cons. 49) and given, on the other hand, that although Constitutional Act No. 2008-724 of 23 July 2008 on the modernisation of the institutions of the Fifth Republic introduced into the Constitution an Article 75-1 to the effect that: "Regional languages are part of the heritage of France", this article does not establish a right or freedom that the Constitution guarantees (Decision No. 2011-130 QPC, 20 May 2011, cons. 3), compulsory funding cannot be imposed on the commune of residence”.
Through this approach taken by the Government in its observations, we understand in this appeal that the alleged unconstitutionality of the school package, developed in a very bad way, was in reality only a pretext, aiming to refer to the Council in a roundabout and disguised way the real objective of the Government: to have the Council declare immersion education unconstitutional.
In fact, the Government chose to draw the Council's attention to the immersion education referred to in Article 4, without any obvious reason for defending Article 6 and without the applicants having even referred, in their referral, directly or indirectly, to Article 2 of the Constitution. One may think that this reference to the case law of the Constitutional Council concerning its definition of immersion teaching established in 2001 (decision n°2001-456DC of 27 December 2001) is in fact a trap set up for the Council to take up the matter of Article 4 on its own, in order to establish its unconstitutionality. The real intention of Minister Blanquer, who teleguided the referral, could not be to attack the school package referred to in Article 6. This provision was perfectly in line with the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Council (decision n°2009-591 DC of 22 October 2009) established after the referral concerning the Carle law, aimed at guaranteeing parity of funding between public and private elementary schools under association contract when they take in pupils educated outside their commune of residence.
Through this perch set up by the Government in its observations, we understand in this appeal that the alleged unconstitutionality of the school package, developed in a very bad way, was in reality only a pretext, aiming to refer to the Council in a roundabout and disguised way the real objective of the Government: to make sure that the Council declares immersion education unconstitutional.
II – The timeliness of the admissibility of the appeal
Never in its history has the Council had to reject an appeal under the procedure of Article 61 of the Constitution on formal grounds. In its decision 96-386 DC of 30 December 1996, which was referred to it by members of parliament wishing to withdraw their signatures after the event, the Council laid down several elements for authenticating the signature and indicated the conditions for justifying a withdrawal. According to this decision, in order to be authenticated, the signature had to be handwritten, and the withdrawal of a signature could only be recorded as a result of fraud, a material error or a defect in consent.
In the present case, two elements suggest that the Council deliberately validated the admissibility despite clear objective elements that would have made the appeal inadmissible. Firstly, the content of the referral shows 61 electronic signatures. In its decision, the Council merely states, without any further reasoning, that "the signatures were authenticated", which is doubtful. Moreover, it states that it was seized by four deputies asking to withdraw their signatures. Without their correspondence being published for the time being in the decision file (still incomplete to date), the Council laconically states that "it does not appear from the investigation that the consent of the deputies who requested the withdrawal of their signatures was vitiated or that they committed a material error in referring the matter to the Constitutional Council".
However, some of the elected representatives concerned made it clear in the press that the elements transmitted to them for the purpose of obtaining their signature were such as to characterise a defect in consent. They argued that it was the very idea of an agreement within the parliamentary group La République en marche that had justified their agreeing to add their name to the referral. However, this issue was the subject of deep divisions within the group in the days following the registration of the appeal.
All of these elements suggest that the members of the Constitutional Council clearly sought to 'save' the appeal. Beyond the scope of the decision itself, it raises several questions as to the necessary motivation of this decision, as to the secrecy of the investigation and the documents in the file. With such a jurisprudential development concerning the criteria for admissibility of an appeal, it is now possible to send an appeal to the Constitutional Council by completing the list of signatories with as many electronic signatures as necessary without the persons concerned even being informed. The secrecy of the procedure could mean that these elected representatives would discover on the day of publication of a decision that they had been at the origin of it.
III – The Council's questionable interpretation of Article 2 of the Constitution
What is surprising is that the French constitutional court justifies the unconstitutionality of immersion education in barely eight vvery short and motivated recitals. It is an express deliberation, far removed from the standards of other constitutional jurisdictions in matters of instruction. The Constitutional Council is being flippant in merely taking up as the sole principle its own interpretation of the paragraph of Article 2 of the Constitution already invoked in its decision no. 2001-456 DC of 27 December 2001, according to which "by virtue of the provisions of Article 2 of the Constitution, the use of French is binding on legal persons under public law and on persons under private law in the exercise of a public service mission. Private individuals may not claim, in their relations with public administrations and services, a right to the use of a language other than French, nor may they be compelled to do so”.
In recital 19, the Constitutional Council finally convinces us of its bad faith by attributing to the preparatory works a definition that is no more and no less than the one it itself established in 2001. Indeed, the Council states that "it follows from the preparatory work of the law in question that the immersive teaching of a regional language is a method which is not limited to teaching this language but consists in using it as the main language of instruction and as a language of communication within the establishment". This element, which is indeed present in the report n°4035 of 31 March 2021, is neither more nor less than a word-for-word transcription of its own 2001 definition. To succeed in this decision in attributing to others what is in fact its own case law cannot be anything other than bad faith, or even a manoeuvre to enshrine a case law through highly questionable arguments.
At the very least, one might have expected the Council to provide much more information for such a decision, but it confined itself to this very weak demonstration, thereby omitting to recall the non-mandatory nature of teaching in the regional language, which it itself enshrined in Decision 91-290 DC of 9 May 1991.
Thus, the Council decides here not only to censure Article 4, but also to extend the scope of the prohibition of immersion teaching by means of a recital of principle. It even takes care to specify, so that there can be no doubt, that this concerns both establishments in the public education service and establishments associated with it, according to a formula that designates the categories of establishments under contract of association with the State, such as Diwan (in Brittany), Seaska (in the Basque Country), Calandreta (in the Occitan area) or Bressola (Catalonia).
With regard to Article 9 on the use of diacritical marks in regional languages in civil status, the Council decided to censure this article purely and simply without any other form of reasoning than 'these provisions recognise the right of individuals to use a language other than French in their relations with administrations and public services'. Assimilating diacritical marks to languages is a simplistic and daring justification for the Council, which is in fact censoring here in a single consideration the freedom of parents to choose their first names.
It is also to be noted and regretted that at no point in this decision does the Constitutional Council decide to its reasoning on the basis of Article 75-1 of the Constitution, which states that "Regional languages are part of of France's heritage". This article, introduced during the 2008 constitutional revision, offered a possibility to reconcile the requirements of Article 2 with new possibilities for the use of regional languages. This could have led to a calmer and reconciled model between the language of the Republic and the effective plurilingualism of this Republic.
However, the Constitutional Council chose to completely ignore Article 75-1 of the Constitution in its decision. It merely mentions it in recital 17, but does not give it any normative scope. What message does the Council send to the constituent power? That the latter is sovereign to revise the Constitution but that the Council remains free to disregard developments in the highest standard in our hierarchy of norms?
However, the constitutional basis of the Molac Act was Article 75-1, and the Council deliberately chose, surprisingly, to exclude any normative scope from this provision.
IV – Constitutional revision as the only way out for a protective legal framework
The content of this note is intended to show the extent to which, through a referral of rocky origin and sloppy content, an obviously inadmissible appeal, and very poorly developed and highly criticizable reasons, the Council decided to declare unconstitutional the use of diacritical signs other than those used for the writing of the French language and teaching by immersion in the regional language.
As regards the diacritical marks used in the French language, the only authoritative list in this respect is the one contained in the circular of 23 July 2014 of the Minister of Justice relating to civil status, i.e. à - â - ä - é - è - ê - ë - ï - î - ô - ö - ù - û - ÿ - ç.
By simply modifying the circular and adding the ñ and other diacritical marks, the question could have been easily resolved, even if a risk in terms of administrative litigation could not be excluded.
On the subject of immersion, given that this teaching has been the subject of such a decision in principle, it seems pointless to hope to have a law passed with a similar provision in an alternative wording. We now know that the Council is prepared to do anything to combat the existence of such teaching, and the slightest referral (direct or indirect) would automatically lead to the censoring of any other provision likely to secure it.
In such a situation, in view of the decision and in accordance with the rule of law, it would be up to the executive to ensure that the principles set out in the decision are applied and that immersion teaching ceases in both public and private schools under contract.
What solution would then remain for the schools concerned than to leave the contractualisation with all that this would imply, including the risk of administrative closure under the pretext of 'separatism'?
On the other hand, a constitutional revision could make it possible to modify Article 2 paragraph 1 and would also make it possible to give a favourable response to the practice of teaching by immersion as well as the use of diacritical signs in regional languages.
Original text in French:
https://pourqueviventnoslangues.jimdofree.com/2021/05/24/une-décision-politique-de-la-part-du-conseil-constitutionnel-analyse-détaillée-de-la-censure-partielle-contre-la-loi-molac/
