Born in 1946, Laurent Fabius knew and managed the three powers of the French Republic: the chief, when he was the Prime Minister of François Mitterrand (1984-1986), the legislative with the presidency of the National Assembly (1988-1992 and 1997-2000) and the very best authorized authority, with the presidency of the Constitutional Council, from 2016 to 2025. Criticized and thought of as a democratic bulwark, the previous first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) analyzes the nationwide political configuration and international geopolitics.
What classes do you study out of your expertise on the head of the Constitutional Council?
The Constitutional Council is an important establishment that takes care to verify, not if the legal guidelines are good or dangerous, however whether or not they’re in accordance with the Constitution. My predecessor and shut buddy Robert Badinter [1928-2024] had positioned on his workplace a cardboard the place he had written: “Any unconstitutional law is bad, but any bad law is not necessarily unconstitutional. I couldn’t say better.
The Constitutional Council does not have to make its decisions for political reasons, but it makes decisions which sometimes have political consequences. Opinion often judges the Council according to the latter, which leads to misunderstandings and inconsistencies.
Two examples. In 2023, the politically contested law on pensions was validated by the Constitutional Council. What did we hear on this “bastion of conservatism”? But, a few months later, this same council largely censored the Immigration Act: this time, it is just if the institution had not become a leftist pharmacy!
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https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2025/05/23/laurent-fabius-le-conseil-constitutionnel-est-un-rempart-pour-proteger-l-etat-de-droit_6607855_3232.html