For decades the President of the Republic has used the title of Commander-in-Chief given to him by Article 15 of the Constitution to embark on overseas adventures without prior approval by Parliament. This interpretation is wrong. It is the law that must define how power is to be shared between the executive and legislative branches of government.
The President of the Republic, Commander-in-Chief
On numerous occasions, and in particular in an article which appeared in the December 2005 issue of Défense nationale et sécurité collective, we have drawn attention to the absence of any legislative basis for the decisions to undertake external military interventions. No legal text authorised the executive branch to engage French armed forces in Rwanda, Kosovo or Afghanistan; all three external operations were decided upon at a time when there were no threats to France, and in the absence of any treaties.
The Code de la défence of December 2004 merely reproduces existing texts, many of them ancient, without coming up with anything new. Book IV (‘Implementation of Military Defence’) even limits itself to the phrase: ‘This book does not include any legislative arrangements’ even though Article 34 of the Constitution lays down that ‘The law determines the fundamental principles of the overall organisation of national defence.’
Everything is based on Article 15 of the Constitution: ‘The President of the Republic is the Commander-in-Chief. He presides over the councils and the high-level committees of national defence.’
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