;)
France, one and indivisible: an evolving reality
Hello everyone,
The APROFED association is coming back to you this weekend to send you an article by Félicien LEMAIRE, professor of public law at the University of Angers , published in the new notebooks of the Constitutional Council No. 35 published in 2012, concerning overseas territories, the unity and indivisibility of the Republic.
You can find his entire article at the following link: Overseas Territories, the Unity and Indivisibility of the Republic | Constitutional Council (conseil-constitutionnel.fr)
To summarize, we learn that France has:
– abandon its principle of unity in order to structure the overseas territories,
– established several special statuses within the republic in order to try to resolve conflicts within these territories,
– thus arranging various exceptions to the French constitutional unitary framework .
Thus, the detractors of federalism claiming that it is not possible because of the adage that France is “one and indivisible” are partly mistaken because France knows how to evolve, adapt, and even practices federalism without knowing it to be, according to Thierry Michalon: a federation that ignores itself (1982).
There are even elements in the French Constitution that allow us to envisage a federal state, as recalled by JJ Urvoas, former Minister of Justice, in an article in Le Monde on 2 September 2017 (see Nouvelle-Calédonie: “The Prime Minister must be bold” (lemonde.fr) ) and in his article on institutional options for New Caledonia (see avenir-nouvelle-caledonie_
It would be appropriate for us for the French State to make its complete and definitive transformation towards federalism and not be content to use this concept only in the event of conflicts, reinforcing outside these periods its unitary and centralizing character which will oblige it to have to manage in the future more and more social conflicts and to spend billions of euros in order to extinguish them and repair the damage caused. As a reminder, under the mandates of Emmanuel Macron as President of the Republic, this unitary vision has already cost the State nearly 20 billion euros in order to extinguish social conflicts.
If it is true that France attempts to maintain unity through “indivisibility”, namely jurisdiction over the law (the same for all) and its mother, the Constitution, here again, the case of New Caledonia and the overseas territories denotes a possible adaptation of the State that some will certainly qualify as a decoy because it is temporary, devoid of normative character, non-prescriptive. The fact remains that the State uses federal-type tools in order to find solutions to conflict situations linked to its unitary framework, not only overseas but also on mainland France . Let us remember that the regions are the result of the thinking and the push of federalists. Returning to a total unitary system would amount to abolishing them and recentralizing all decisions in Paris, recreating and reinforcing the “French desert”.
Furthermore, if France were to strictly apply its vision of “one and indivisible,” it would then have to leave the European Union, as the English did with Brexit, since it has conceded a large number of its powers to the EU. However , it would seem that the health and military crises of recent years are pushing it towards an increasingly federal Europe. If France has therefore integrated a supranational federal system through the European Union, why would it refuse at the subnational level an identical status to New Caledonia and its overseas territories?
However, the arrival of a conservative prime minister at the helm of the French government in September 2024, unfortunately, does not bode well, in our opinion. The last time a right-wing prime minister had to manage a conflict in New Caledonia resulted in the tragedy of Ouvéa.
An article published on September 10, 2024 on the caledosphere website supports this view, informing us that one of the four scenarios planned by the State to secure the road crossing the St-Louis tribe, where the majority of clashes with law enforcement are currently taking place, would be a military operation with the army reconquering the tribe, with the death toll already estimated at between 20 and 60, followed by the transfer of the tribe’s population to another location. Find the full article at the following link: St-Louis Tribe: the four solutions considered by the State – Calédosphère (caledosphere.com)
The association should finalize a political agreement on federalism as quickly as possible before arriving at such a situation which could have consequences beyond the simple tribe of St-Louis but on the entire territory with in return a potential triggering of phase 3 of the CCAT aiming to carry out armed actions as in 1988. The association unfortunately believes that this is the direction the country seems to be heading towards for the last quarter of 2024.
We wish you a good read and remind you that federalism is the only solution to reconcile unity in diversity.
The APROFED association