The French government said on Thursday (6 July) that EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders had no competence to comment on policing in France in the wake of recent riots.
After police killed a 17-year-old boy from an impoverished suburb of Paris, nationwide riots rocked the country and resulted in widespread looting and damage totalling an estimated €1 billion.
“Every time, there is a very high level of violence” in France, European Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said on Wednesday, reacting to the behaviour of the French police in the context of their response to the riots.
“We really need to have a reflection about how to organise policing,” he added, citing the period of the ‘yellow vests’, the demonstrations against pension reform and, more recently, the riots.
The French government reacted through its EU Affairs Minister Laurence Boone: “I am very surprised because policing is not part of European prerogatives,” she said on public broadcaster Radio France Internationale (RFI) on Thursday morning.
“Mr Reynders published a report yesterday [Wednesday] on the rule of law in the countries of the Union […], and there is nothing on policing”, added Boone, stressing the EU’s lack of competence in this area.
Asked whether the commissioner had “stepped outside his remit” and whether he had been “wrong” to express himself as he had, the minister replied in the affirmative. The situation was “dramatic”, she said, and required appeasement, not “petty comments […] from people who are not qualified to say that”.
On the substance, Boone assured the French government that it would “draw conclusions […] calmly”.
These kinds of problems are “not unique to France”, she continued, citing similar events in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden. Boone added that, this weekend, her Swedish counterpart had said that Stockholm was looking at France’s policing doctrine, “to follow the French model and to adapt it here [in Sweden]”.
Finally, the French minister insisted that the actions of one police officer did not reflect the behaviour of the French police as a whole, that “there is no security problem in France” or “systemic racism in the police”.
Last Friday, France had already criticised the statement by the spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, calling on France to look “seriously” at the problems of racism and racial discrimination within its police force.
“Any accusation of systemic racism or discrimination by law enforcement agencies in France is totally unfounded”, the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday (1 July).
“The police are dealing with situations and acts of extreme violence with great professionalism”, added the Ministry.
[Edited by Alice Taylor]
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