Ministers want to expel foreigners deemed dangerous before ECHR appeal
France is prepared to break European human rights law to expel “dangerous” foreigners as President Macron’s government pledges the toughest crackdown on immigration in 30 years.
Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, said France would deport foreigners deemed a threat without waiting for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to hear their appeals. If their removal was judged to have violated the European Convention on Human Rights, Paris would pay a fine but not allow them back.
Darmanin has put forward legislation — which will also extend the period of time that someone can be held in detention without bringing a charge — designed to woo traditional centre and hard-right voters who would typically vote for the Republicans party or Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
He believes that as the terror threat rises amid the war between Israel and Gaza and the killing of Dominique Bernard, a teacher in Arras, northern France, by an alleged Islamist radical this month, public opinion is on his side.
Under the proposed bill, foreigners served with deportation notices could be detained for 18 months if they also have a criminal record or are on an intelligence agency watchlist while their expulsion process is handled. At the moment, they can only be detained for 90 days and are often released before the deportation procedure has been completed.
The minister also wants to make it easier to expel asylum claimants who fail to obtain refugee status and refuse residency permits to applicants who cannot speak French or who espouse radical Islam. Darmanin has drawn accusations that his hardline stance threatened to undermine Macron’s second term of office by jettisoning the pro-European values at the heart of the head of state’s agenda.
Backing sought from the right
Darmanin, who harbours aspirations for the Élysée Palace when Macron steps down at the end of his second term in 2027, declared there were “no taboos” in the fight against terrorism.
He is seeking to win right-wing support for his immigration bill, which will come before the Senate next month and the National Assembly in December.
Darmanin said that he had been justified in deporting two radical Islamists, one a convicted terrorist, to Russia even though the ECHR had said they would face torture there.
Without opposition support, Darmanin’s proposed legislation stands little chance of getting through both houses of parliament, where the government lacks an absolute majority.
Darmanin initially hoped to woo moderates on both left and right with a package that included a crackdown on asylum but also authorisation for illegal immigrants to stay in France if they found jobs in sectors where there were labour shortages.
Now the minister has given up hope of winning over the centre-left and is moving rightwards to woo Republicans MPs.
Echoes of Braverman
Darmanin drew up the battle lines by expressing the sort of reservations about the ECHR that Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has voiced in Britain. He notably attacked the court over its enforcement of the European Convention of Human Rights, which says that “everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law” and “that no one shall be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
Darmanin said this stopped him from expelling foreign criminals, and notably radical Islamists, to countries where they risked the death penalty or torture. “But should we keep [them] with us when they can also cause death in our country?” he said. “What is the role of the interior minister? To protect the population.”
Darmanin suggested that France had been right to expel two criminals from the mostly Muslim republic of Chechnya last year after one had served a jail sentence for participating in a terrorist plot and the second was accused by the French interior ministry of being an Islamist radical.
The ECHR said the expulsion violated the European Convention on Human Rights because of the risk that the Chechens would be tortured on their return to Russia.
Darmanin said: “I think the French people … find that it makes sense that someone given a ten-year jail sentence for terrorist activities can be expelled because they are very dangerous.”
Fines ‘a price worth paying’
Unlike Braverman, however, he said there was no question of leaving the convention. He said France would instead circumvent the court by expelling foreigners deemed to be dangerous before it had time to give judgment. He added that he did not mind if that meant paying a fine.
“We used to wait until we had the opinion [of the ECHR] even if that meant keeping extremely dangerous people on our soil. Now we don’t wait. We expel and we wait to see what the court is going to say. The consequence of that is indeed a fine,” Darmanin told the Journal du Dimanche.
A source at the Ministry of the Interior said the court’s fines were only €3,000 and added that it often took three years to give judgment.
Darmanin said 89 “radicalised foreigners” had been expelled since the start of the year. He says his new immigration bill will facilitate the procedure by removing a ban on expelling foreign criminals if they are married to a French national or if they immigrated to France before the age of 13.
The issue is sensitive given that the French teacher’s killer, a former pupil from Ingushetia, also a mainly Muslim Russian republic, was refused asylum but escaped expulsion because he had arrived in France at the age of five.
Writing in Libération, the left-wing daily newspaper, Thomas Legrand, a political commentator, said Darmanin was in effect claiming that “the rule of law prevents him from acting as he would like to ensure the safety of the French people”. He said that in other democracies, a minister would be weakened if he was found to have broken the law. In France, he “emerges reinforced”.
Legrand added that Darmanin was “ruining what was left of Macron’s fragile equilibrium [between left and right]. Emmanuel Macron is being robbed like a novice by the cunning interior minister”.
Oh god it’s about time. Deport them and guarantee the safety of France and then Europe
European rights law needs immediate review. What happened to the rights of the hundreds of EU citizens murdered by Islamic fundamentalism. The bar is set far too high for the dangerous times we now face.
Thank fuck, let’s hope if France lead the charge here that the rest of Europe will follow suit. I didn’t even know these things had to be passed by a court. It’s treason to commit terrorist offences against your government and nationals, surely. 100 years ago it was the guillotine. I think deportation back to some shithole is already a massive leap forward in human rights.
Sounds to me like France is going to break international law in a limited and specific way..
Well well well, how the turntables.
I support the fuck out of this, fyi. Just laugh at the double standard/ignorance of the left in the UK. International law is only abided to by small weak states, or big powerful states only until its inconvenient.
That’s the truth of international law. It’s make believe. A way to make smaller weaker countries toe the line.
If you’re a big/powerful country and you let international law get in your way, and make you worse off, you’re a fucking mug.
Because no one else is.
That’s two member nations who are not happy with the current set up. Rather than France breaking ECHR law and the UK talking about leaving all together, how about amending the rules to reflect the current situation.
People didn’t foresee the problems we are having today so it’s time for modernisation for the law to reflect reality.
Based France if only the UK could not be so fucking scared of a useless powerless organisation.
Idiots in our own media calling us an international pariah for even considering it.
EU needs to collectively abandon the Refugee Convention. That is the absolute minimum and should have been done eight years ago.
I’ll allow it.
This should include second and third generations, or else we would be in the same situation in the future.
Damn right they are.
If the European laws are there to protect the citizens and taxpayers, keep the international order and ensure civility – then any currently existing laws or regulations that actively harm the people, safety or order should effectively be considered null and void.
People > politicians.
Illegal immigration needs to stop. No matter which means are to be used. Borders are borders and they need to be protected.
Another “I told you so” from Eastern Europe.
The more time pass and the more my appreciation for france and the french increase.
It’s about time. Brussels should adapt to reality.
A fact of life a lot of people seem to not realize. Laws are more of guidelines than unmovable walls. As you can see how powerful people can make them bend as flexible as a pool noodle.
Seeing as how 1 sided war crimes punishments are all the time should have made it abundantly clear already
Europe will ALWAYS have an increasing illegal immigration problem because of the QoL, climate, and social benefits. We really need to start building systems that will allow us to live in relative safety and comfort when the rest of the world goes to sh*t b/c of wars, famine, etc.
It’s 1 thing to be considerate and supportive, but entirely other to ensure our survival as states and economies. Does US let everyone in? Does China do it? Does Australia do it? Does Japan or Korea do it? Literally every other top economy is either well positioned geographically to counteract illegal immigration, or is actively defending it’s borders against it.
Good. But why did we have to wait for a Hamas terror attack to start doing that?
Anybody here with sufficient knowledge on the topic to weigh in if what they say is true or it’s just politicians’laziness in improving a process. Is ECHR that strict or are the governments dragging their feet and blaming them?
Honestly as a foreigner you guys care more about these people than themselves or their respective governments. It’s hurting you and also the immigrants who are here just to work and try to integrate.
Waiting how people will approve this while they shit on Poland.
If EU institutions are stupid then why should they apply anywhere? What is “right/correct” exception? Or law can be broken because it’s France/Germany?
Finally
Crazy that, if this was said 10 years ago, he would have been deemed a racist for saying something like that. And a lot of people here would have jumped on that bandwagon right away and tried to get him removed from office.
Who would have predicted that letting in droves of fighting-age males who have:
1) no intention of doing a day’s work and living exclusively on welfare and crime
and
2) have no intention of integrating or, at least, trying to integrate into a pre-existing society
was a bad idea?
Who knew that having no regulation of who comes in, and basing it on sins of the past and feeling bad about it, would be problematic somewhere along the road?
The chickens have come to roost, and you might be too late to do it the civilized way. This is going to get ugly.
Understandable. The laws we have do not make sense. Breaking things old people implemented sounds reasonable.
European lifestyle was about being tolerant and civilised. The main problem of people outside Europe, who come to live in Europe – they don’t want to get integrated in this society, they try to build their own, in they way they used to, in their countries. That’s not right. If people come to Europe, they should get adapted to it’s laws, commons and traditions, or not to come.
Whoever invented these laws is a complete delusional moron
Great can’t wait
several years ago, they were able to deport hundreds of romanian gypsies, EU citizens even, without any problems. somehow there is a human rights issue now
Just do it, national security requires these measures. They should have been done 20 years ago. Europe and France have suffered enough from attacks criminal and terror related incidents.
I’m sure this will be met with the similar outrage people had over the U.K. threatening to do it…
At last! Some sense!
Well done France!
Can’t wait to see that in my country too!
Oh so this can be done? It’s about time
This is just populism. The lack of prisons and judges is the real issue.
If I say this is a good idea, I might get reported again by the mob…
The European Union needs to be reformed. Need to be updated to current problems. Mass migration, housing crisis and climate change. And many more. And the European Court of Human Rights should apply to…wait for it….europeans.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” as the old saying goes. You could’ve listened to people telling you to not import problems and now you have to break laws to remove problems.
“Congratulations. You played yourself” as the young saying goes.
Why doesn’t Europe takes a cue from Australia and builds detention centers in Svalbard while they’re processed? I’m sure suddenly the amount of people daring to illegally enter Europe would plummet. And in those not-so-rare cases they destroy their papers and forget where they come from, they can work in the coal mines the Russians left. It’s a win-win situations for both European countries and the polar bear community.
What’s Ursula gonna do, write a letter that she is angry, that’s all she is capable of while there is an invasion going on.
I can’t believe I’m gonna say this but….about time
Europe has been too tolerant. If they don’t want to integrate, let’s just kick them out and we shouldn’t care what happens to them
40 comments
**Article text**
Ministers want to expel foreigners deemed dangerous before ECHR appeal
France is prepared to break European human rights law to expel “dangerous” foreigners as President Macron’s government pledges the toughest crackdown on immigration in 30 years.
Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, said France would deport foreigners deemed a threat without waiting for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to hear their appeals. If their removal was judged to have violated the European Convention on Human Rights, Paris would pay a fine but not allow them back.
Darmanin has put forward legislation — which will also extend the period of time that someone can be held in detention without bringing a charge — designed to woo traditional centre and hard-right voters who would typically vote for the Republicans party or Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
He believes that as the terror threat rises amid the war between Israel and Gaza and the killing of Dominique Bernard, a teacher in Arras, northern France, by an alleged Islamist radical this month, public opinion is on his side.
Under the proposed bill, foreigners served with deportation notices could be detained for 18 months if they also have a criminal record or are on an intelligence agency watchlist while their expulsion process is handled. At the moment, they can only be detained for 90 days and are often released before the deportation procedure has been completed.
The minister also wants to make it easier to expel asylum claimants who fail to obtain refugee status and refuse residency permits to applicants who cannot speak French or who espouse radical Islam. Darmanin has drawn accusations that his hardline stance threatened to undermine Macron’s second term of office by jettisoning the pro-European values at the heart of the head of state’s agenda.
Backing sought from the right
Darmanin, who harbours aspirations for the Élysée Palace when Macron steps down at the end of his second term in 2027, declared there were “no taboos” in the fight against terrorism.
He is seeking to win right-wing support for his immigration bill, which will come before the Senate next month and the National Assembly in December.
Darmanin said that he had been justified in deporting two radical Islamists, one a convicted terrorist, to Russia even though the ECHR had said they would face torture there.
Without opposition support, Darmanin’s proposed legislation stands little chance of getting through both houses of parliament, where the government lacks an absolute majority.
Darmanin initially hoped to woo moderates on both left and right with a package that included a crackdown on asylum but also authorisation for illegal immigrants to stay in France if they found jobs in sectors where there were labour shortages.
Now the minister has given up hope of winning over the centre-left and is moving rightwards to woo Republicans MPs.
Echoes of Braverman
Darmanin drew up the battle lines by expressing the sort of reservations about the ECHR that Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has voiced in Britain. He notably attacked the court over its enforcement of the European Convention of Human Rights, which says that “everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law” and “that no one shall be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
Darmanin said this stopped him from expelling foreign criminals, and notably radical Islamists, to countries where they risked the death penalty or torture. “But should we keep [them] with us when they can also cause death in our country?” he said. “What is the role of the interior minister? To protect the population.”
Darmanin suggested that France had been right to expel two criminals from the mostly Muslim republic of Chechnya last year after one had served a jail sentence for participating in a terrorist plot and the second was accused by the French interior ministry of being an Islamist radical.
The ECHR said the expulsion violated the European Convention on Human Rights because of the risk that the Chechens would be tortured on their return to Russia.
Darmanin said: “I think the French people … find that it makes sense that someone given a ten-year jail sentence for terrorist activities can be expelled because they are very dangerous.”
Fines ‘a price worth paying’
Unlike Braverman, however, he said there was no question of leaving the convention. He said France would instead circumvent the court by expelling foreigners deemed to be dangerous before it had time to give judgment. He added that he did not mind if that meant paying a fine.
“We used to wait until we had the opinion [of the ECHR] even if that meant keeping extremely dangerous people on our soil. Now we don’t wait. We expel and we wait to see what the court is going to say. The consequence of that is indeed a fine,” Darmanin told the Journal du Dimanche.
A source at the Ministry of the Interior said the court’s fines were only €3,000 and added that it often took three years to give judgment.
Darmanin said 89 “radicalised foreigners” had been expelled since the start of the year. He says his new immigration bill will facilitate the procedure by removing a ban on expelling foreign criminals if they are married to a French national or if they immigrated to France before the age of 13.
The issue is sensitive given that the French teacher’s killer, a former pupil from Ingushetia, also a mainly Muslim Russian republic, was refused asylum but escaped expulsion because he had arrived in France at the age of five.
Writing in Libération, the left-wing daily newspaper, Thomas Legrand, a political commentator, said Darmanin was in effect claiming that “the rule of law prevents him from acting as he would like to ensure the safety of the French people”. He said that in other democracies, a minister would be weakened if he was found to have broken the law. In France, he “emerges reinforced”.
Legrand added that Darmanin was “ruining what was left of Macron’s fragile equilibrium [between left and right]. Emmanuel Macron is being robbed like a novice by the cunning interior minister”.
Oh god it’s about time. Deport them and guarantee the safety of France and then Europe
European rights law needs immediate review. What happened to the rights of the hundreds of EU citizens murdered by Islamic fundamentalism. The bar is set far too high for the dangerous times we now face.
Thank fuck, let’s hope if France lead the charge here that the rest of Europe will follow suit. I didn’t even know these things had to be passed by a court. It’s treason to commit terrorist offences against your government and nationals, surely. 100 years ago it was the guillotine. I think deportation back to some shithole is already a massive leap forward in human rights.
Sounds to me like France is going to break international law in a limited and specific way..
Well well well, how the turntables.
I support the fuck out of this, fyi. Just laugh at the double standard/ignorance of the left in the UK. International law is only abided to by small weak states, or big powerful states only until its inconvenient.
That’s the truth of international law. It’s make believe. A way to make smaller weaker countries toe the line.
If you’re a big/powerful country and you let international law get in your way, and make you worse off, you’re a fucking mug.
Because no one else is.
That’s two member nations who are not happy with the current set up. Rather than France breaking ECHR law and the UK talking about leaving all together, how about amending the rules to reflect the current situation.
People didn’t foresee the problems we are having today so it’s time for modernisation for the law to reflect reality.
Based France if only the UK could not be so fucking scared of a useless powerless organisation.
Idiots in our own media calling us an international pariah for even considering it.
EU needs to collectively abandon the Refugee Convention. That is the absolute minimum and should have been done eight years ago.
I’ll allow it.
This should include second and third generations, or else we would be in the same situation in the future.
Damn right they are.
If the European laws are there to protect the citizens and taxpayers, keep the international order and ensure civility – then any currently existing laws or regulations that actively harm the people, safety or order should effectively be considered null and void.
People > politicians.
Illegal immigration needs to stop. No matter which means are to be used. Borders are borders and they need to be protected.
Another “I told you so” from Eastern Europe.
The more time pass and the more my appreciation for france and the french increase.
It’s about time. Brussels should adapt to reality.
A fact of life a lot of people seem to not realize. Laws are more of guidelines than unmovable walls. As you can see how powerful people can make them bend as flexible as a pool noodle.
Seeing as how 1 sided war crimes punishments are all the time should have made it abundantly clear already
Europe will ALWAYS have an increasing illegal immigration problem because of the QoL, climate, and social benefits. We really need to start building systems that will allow us to live in relative safety and comfort when the rest of the world goes to sh*t b/c of wars, famine, etc.
It’s 1 thing to be considerate and supportive, but entirely other to ensure our survival as states and economies. Does US let everyone in? Does China do it? Does Australia do it? Does Japan or Korea do it? Literally every other top economy is either well positioned geographically to counteract illegal immigration, or is actively defending it’s borders against it.
Good. But why did we have to wait for a Hamas terror attack to start doing that?
Anybody here with sufficient knowledge on the topic to weigh in if what they say is true or it’s just politicians’laziness in improving a process. Is ECHR that strict or are the governments dragging their feet and blaming them?
Honestly as a foreigner you guys care more about these people than themselves or their respective governments. It’s hurting you and also the immigrants who are here just to work and try to integrate.
Waiting how people will approve this while they shit on Poland.
If EU institutions are stupid then why should they apply anywhere? What is “right/correct” exception? Or law can be broken because it’s France/Germany?
Finally
Crazy that, if this was said 10 years ago, he would have been deemed a racist for saying something like that. And a lot of people here would have jumped on that bandwagon right away and tried to get him removed from office.
Who would have predicted that letting in droves of fighting-age males who have:
1) no intention of doing a day’s work and living exclusively on welfare and crime
and
2) have no intention of integrating or, at least, trying to integrate into a pre-existing society
was a bad idea?
Who knew that having no regulation of who comes in, and basing it on sins of the past and feeling bad about it, would be problematic somewhere along the road?
The chickens have come to roost, and you might be too late to do it the civilized way. This is going to get ugly.
Understandable. The laws we have do not make sense. Breaking things old people implemented sounds reasonable.
European lifestyle was about being tolerant and civilised. The main problem of people outside Europe, who come to live in Europe – they don’t want to get integrated in this society, they try to build their own, in they way they used to, in their countries. That’s not right. If people come to Europe, they should get adapted to it’s laws, commons and traditions, or not to come.
Whoever invented these laws is a complete delusional moron
Great can’t wait
several years ago, they were able to deport hundreds of romanian gypsies, EU citizens even, without any problems. somehow there is a human rights issue now
Just do it, national security requires these measures. They should have been done 20 years ago. Europe and France have suffered enough from attacks criminal and terror related incidents.
I’m sure this will be met with the similar outrage people had over the U.K. threatening to do it…
At last! Some sense!
Well done France!
Can’t wait to see that in my country too!
Oh so this can be done? It’s about time
This is just populism. The lack of prisons and judges is the real issue.
If I say this is a good idea, I might get reported again by the mob…
The European Union needs to be reformed. Need to be updated to current problems. Mass migration, housing crisis and climate change. And many more. And the European Court of Human Rights should apply to…wait for it….europeans.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” as the old saying goes. You could’ve listened to people telling you to not import problems and now you have to break laws to remove problems.
“Congratulations. You played yourself” as the young saying goes.
Why doesn’t Europe takes a cue from Australia and builds detention centers in Svalbard while they’re processed? I’m sure suddenly the amount of people daring to illegally enter Europe would plummet. And in those not-so-rare cases they destroy their papers and forget where they come from, they can work in the coal mines the Russians left. It’s a win-win situations for both European countries and the polar bear community.
What’s Ursula gonna do, write a letter that she is angry, that’s all she is capable of while there is an invasion going on.
I can’t believe I’m gonna say this but….about time
Europe has been too tolerant. If they don’t want to integrate, let’s just kick them out and we shouldn’t care what happens to them
Sincerely, as a Pole. We’ve told you