bathe of tributes after the demise of Robert Badinter | EUROtoday

President Emmanuel Macron greeted Robert Badinter on Friday February 9, who died on the age of 95, “the man for the abolition of the death penalty” and “a figure of the century, a republican conscience, the French spirit”, asserting that “a national tribute will be paid to him”. The disappearance of this defender of the abolition of the demise penalty sparked reactions throughout your entire political spectrum.

“Lawyer, Minister of Justice, man for the abolition of the death penalty. Robert Badinter never stopped pleading for the Enlightenment”, underlined the Head of State on X a couple of minutes after the announcement of the demise of the Former President of the Constitutional Council.

Read additionallyRobert Badinter, the daddy of the abolition of the demise penalty, has died

“One righteous among the righteous”

Laurent Fabius, who holds this place at the moment and who was a member of Pierre Mauroy's authorities similtaneously the emblematic Minister of Justice, paid tribute in a message to AFP to “a righteous man among the righteous” , who “in all the functions he has exercised, in all the causes he has pleaded, has advanced law and humanism on a national and international level”.

“He will have devoted every second of his life to fighting for what was just, to fighting for fundamental freedoms. The abolition of the death penalty will forever be his legacy for France,” reacted the Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, additionally on X.

“Robert Badinter was the defender of just causes, humanism incarnate, the voice of wisdom in a disrupted world,” underlined in flip the President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet (Renaissance).

Rachida Dati, present Minister of Culture and former Minister of Justice, reacted on X: “Abolishing the death penalty, as Minister of Justice, was the fight of her life. It will forever be one of our greatest legacies We will never forget Robert Badinter, his ardor, the strength of his conviction, his unwavering thirst for justice.”

MoDem chief François Bayrou hailed AFP as “a landmark and a reference”. “He was a distinguished, cultivated spirit, having the courage of his indignations. For several generations, he will have been an inspiration,” underlined the centrist.

For the present Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, Robert Badinter was a “huge lawyer, visionary and courageous Minister of Justice (he) embodied our Republic and its values.”

“He embodied the very idea of ​​justice”

On franceinfo, former socialist president François Hollande paid tribute to Robert Badinter's “message” “not of indulgence, but of human dignity” with the abolition of the demise penalty. “It was to make people understand that it was law which must prevail over force each time, it was a message that came from far away. His family had experienced the pogroms in eastern Europe, had was welcomed in France, he himself had hidden in Chambéry during the period of the Occupation”, detailed François Hollande.

“A high intellectual and moral figure is leaving us,” former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin informed AFP. “Perhaps as a result of from childhood in his household he had been struck by the horror of Nazism, Robert Badinter positioned the seek for reality, the demand for humanity and the hope of peace.”

Assuring that François Mitterrand's former Minister of Justice had been “the reason for his dedication”, the first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, saw in Robert Badinter “greater than the abolitionist who put an finish to the demise penalty” because “he embodied the very idea of ​​justice”.

Her counterpart among the many Ecologists, Marine Tondelier, insisted on the demise of a “great thinker of freedoms” and a “convinced European”, whereas Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), who had rubbed shoulders with Robert Badinter within the Senate, welcomed an “unparalleled strength of conviction” and a “simply luminous” man. “He was a speaker who brought his words to life like poetry,” he reacted on X.

“Robert Badinter seemed to be this unsinkable rock serving the defense of the values ​​of our Republic. His fight against the death penalty is forever inscribed in history. Our country loses one of its great men.”, for his half writes on X the nationwide secretary of the PCF Fabien Roussel.

The sober tributes of the rights

Right-wing and far-right political leaders needed to be sober of their feedback on Friday after the demise of Robert Badinter, whereas the query of the demise penalty stays important in French society.

“Former Minister of Justice, man of letters, Robert Badinter defended his ideals throughout his life, with constancy and eloquence,” merely described the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, born in 1995.

Marine Le Pen, for her half, paid tribute to “a notable figure in the intellectual and legal landscape”, recalling that “we could not share all the struggles” of the previous Minister of Justice.

Because Robert Badinter was for a very long time a hated determine of the French excessive proper, who noticed in his claimed humanism a “laxity” and his struggle towards the guillotine a failure of the repressive system.

In June 1983, when lots of of police demonstrated underneath the home windows of his workplace shouting “Badinter assassin!”, Jean-Marie Le Pen, president of the National Front, was there.

More than forty years after the abolition of capital punishment, the query stays acute: 81% of National Rally supporters are in favor of its reestablishment, as are 51% of LR supporters – a determine akin to the general inhabitants -, in keeping with the Ipsos French Fractures examine printed final October.

Far from the lyricism of the tributes paid to the left and the middle, the proper needed to be respectful, however factual.

The head of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, soberly saluted an “emblematic figure of justice”, recognizing that “his fight for the abolition of the death penalty will remain engraved in our memories and our institutions”; a “courageous fight”, supported Valérie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France area.

The boss of the LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, praised “a talent, a culture and an intelligence put entirely at the service of unshakeable convictions”.

“Robert Badinter today enters the Pantheon of great men who will have forever marked the history of France!” declared Gérard Larcher, LR president of the Senate on X.

“Let us recognize, beyond our political differences,” added Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, president of Debout la France, “the strength and constancy of his commitment.”

With AFP