The Constitutional Council validated this Friday the power granted to the prefects to evict by force, without going through a judge, an illegally squatted house.
The 2007 law -modified in 2020- that authorizes such a procedure does not violate respect for private life, nor the inviolability of the home, nor the right to an effective remedy since the eviction decision is challengeable in terms of administrative justice , estimated the “Wise Men”. Therefore, they rejected a “priority question of constitutionality” (QPC) on this issue.
Under “reservation of interpretation”
The Council, however, accompanied its decision with a “reservation of interpretation”: the law, it considered, does not authorize the prefect to order the expulsion “without taking into account the personal or family situation of the occupant whose evacuation is requested.”
The Elders were asked to rule on this issue at the request of a lawyer for a woman who had been deported based on the challenged provision.
Associations such as Right to Housing (DAL), the Abbé Pierre Foundation or Secours Catholique had supported her in her approach, in particular to challenge a provision introduced into the law at the end of 2020, which expands the power of the prefect in matters of “forced evacuation ” to any type of “home” – which according to the associations is too vague a formulation, which opens the way to an application even to empty houses.
A “tightening” of legislation
The “reservation” presented by the Elders “is better than nothing,” Jean-Baptiste Eyraud, spokesman for the DAL, told AFP. But the general rejection of the QPC is all the more disappointing as we are currently seeing a “tightening up” in the fight against squatters, Jean-Baptiste Eyraud noted.
The associations are, in effect, headwinds to a bill currently being considered in Parliament, which notably provides for trebling the penalties incurred by squatters.
Source: BFM TV
