Farmers specifically are protesting in opposition to the inflation of requirements affecting their sector. They aren’t the one ones who’re fed up with the overflow of legal guidelines and decrees that overwhelm us.
Sixty-seven legal guidelines printed, 91 ordinances, 1,843 decrees, 83,570 pages within the Journal Officiel, and extra. Regardless of guarantees to fight the circulate of recent requirements, the yr 2021 may have damaged many information. That is nothing new. Right here’s what we wrote again in 2014, in “Les dessous des Affaires judiciaires” (MaxMilo Editions) with Frédéric Crotta.
“Even the perfect authorized consultants have hassle discovering their method via the thicket of legal guidelines, decrees, rules and different European directives relevant in France. With a “inventory” of some 400,000 administrative requirements in drive, justice has grow to be completely incomprehensible to the overwhelming majority of residents. A lot so, actually, that it has grow to be a supply of authorized uncertainty.
An anomaly denounced by, amongst others, Jean-Michel Darrois, a enterprise lawyer specializing in monetary markets, mergers & acquisitions, litigation and worldwide arbitration. Now we have increasingly texts, increasingly illegible, longer and longer, increasingly complicated,” says the famend lawyer. Professor Soyer has in contrast the American Declaration of Independence, which incorporates just below 200 phrases, with a round from the Nineteen Eighties on the advertising and marketing of duck eggs, which incorporates over 70,000 phrases!”
Some 400,000 requirements
Too many legal guidelines, but nobody is meant to disregard the legislation. That is clearly a authorized fiction, as nobody can presumably know all of the legal guidelines and rules (decrees, circulars, and so forth.) relevant in France at present.
What number of are there? Far too many. We’ve identified this since Montaigne who, as early because the 16thᵉ century, asserted: “Now we have extra legal guidelines in France than in all the remainder of the world, and sufficient legal guidelines to manipulate all of the international locations of the world collectively” (Essais, Livre III). Montesquieu added in L’Esprit des Lois (1758): “Ineffective legal guidelines weaken obligatory legal guidelines”. Lastly, Portalis, one of many major drafters of the Civil Code, really helpful “being sober about new laws”.
Too many legal guidelines? Let’s do the maths. There are at the moment 64 authorized codes (the Civil Code, the Prison Code, the Code of Prison Process, the City Planning Code, the Well being Code, the Basic Tax Code, the Heritage Code, the Client Code, the Insurance coverage Code, the Native Authorities Code, and so forth.). Collectively, the variety of articles of legislation with which the French should comply is 22,334. However the variety of decrees specifying the requirements in drive is 137,219. To this should be added the a whole lot of 1000’s of administrative requirements of all types that govern each facet of our financial and social life. In all, there are some 400,000 requirements in “inventory”. To not point out the 7,400 treaties and 17,000 Group texts.
Transposing European directives
One other method of assessing the buildup of legal guidelines and decrees relevant in our nation is to measure the typical size of the Official Journal. It has gone from 15,000 pages per yr within the Nineteen Eighties to 23,000 pages at present. As for the Recueil des lois de l’Assemblée nationale, it has grown from 433 pages within the early 70s to virtually 4,000 pages.
It’s true that a part of the legislative exercise is linked to the necessity to transpose European Union directives into our nationwide legislation.
France within the 21ᵉ century remains to be beating information when it comes to normative inflation. All of the extra in order the issue of overabundance is compounded by an issue of textual content high quality, which contributes to confusion.
Added to that is the truth that the legislation should adapt to the world round it and to the incessant progress of methods and sciences. This results in the emergence of recent, generally complicated constraints.
We’re witnessing the rise of Anglo-Saxon legislation and worldwide rules,” observes Me Darrois. This has many disadvantages, as worldwide rules are typically compromise rules that keep in mind the authorized historical past of every member state. The result’s unreadable, prolonged and complicated texts.
Anglo-Saxon legislation
The lawyer notes that Anglo-Saxon companies are probably the most highly effective, that the USA dominates the world, and consequently their authorized practices are inclined to develop. “They run the chance of resulting in a state of affairs of such confusion, with a multiplication of texts and case legislation that’s more and more incomprehensible, random and unpredictable, that we might properly need to return sooner or later to the willpower of easy guidelines. Will States or Unions of States be capable of do that? If this continues, we are able to foresee that it’s going to not. It’s conceivable that the drafting of requirements will now not be entrusted solely to States, but in addition to nationwide or worldwide establishments, extra skilled within the fields they must resolve on. We are going to see a multiplication of sources of requirements, which can be explicit, corporatist requirements”.
Too many advert hoc legal guidelines
Lastly, it needs to be stated that there are too many advert hoc legal guidelines. Politicians are tempted to make legal guidelines to “purchase” a clientele on the political market. In 2008, Bruno Thouzellier, then president of the Union syndicale des magistrats (USM), deplored the truth that “the slightest information merchandise provides rise to the adoption of a brand new legislation handed in haste”. That hasn’t modified since, fairly the opposite!
Legal guidelines are now not secure, as a result of legislators react to each disaster, each scandal, each time the present legislation appears unsuitable,” confirms Jean-Michel Darrois. The result’s a proliferation of more and more prolonged and illegible legal guidelines, and the legislator now not intervenes to control normal balances, however to try to stability out particular person conditions.”
Unreadable texts
“As for European texts, the results of laborious compromises marked by completely different authorized cultures, they’re typically troublesome to translate into our laws. Reform and novelty don’t oblige us to swirl legal guidelines, rules, European directives or courtroom rulings, which create confusion and a ‘ras-le-bol’ not less than as robust as in tax issues”.
For instability and legislative inflation are a supply of authorized insecurity. This insecurity is exacerbated by the standard of the texts. Certainly, legal guidelines are now not drafted by parliamentarians and jurists, however by senior civil servants, most of them enarques. The administration has “taken possession of the nation”, observes Alain Lambert, former minister and chairman of the French Advisory Committee on Requirements.
France is a rustic intoxicated with legislation,” he says, “one of many international locations on the earth with probably the most texts. The French fatality is to imagine that every one issues may be solved by legislation. He provides: “The legislation has grow to be so complicated that there’s hardly a single politician able to drafting a invoice himself: out of 1,000 legislative texts, 950 come from the pen of a senior civil servant. The position of politics within the working of the nation has grow to be residual, other than communication”.
That’s at present’s downside. We give precedence to ‘com’, i.e. bluster, appearances and chatter, over actual politics, which consists of attempting to unravel the issues of the French individuals. Farmers are proper: France is strolling on its head!
All you must find out about European requirements to ensure meals security
