France¶
The French cases show a power to dissolve associations that acts first and is reviewed afterwards. The government decides by decree, the judge examines the grounds once the decision has taken effect, and correction depends on someone bringing the case. The courts have shown restraint in both directions, protecting association against a weak file and candidacy against a conviction, so the safeguard rests on judicial temperament rather than on the order of the procedure.
The clerk’s briefs¶
From the clerks, for the Patrician’s eyes
Worth a look. A group dissolved by decree lives as dissolved until the judge rules, and its members, and associations like it, learn caution in the meantime whatever the court later decides. When a decree is annulled the cost has fallen on the targets, not on the government. A far-right government, which the courts have left free to compete, would inherit the power trimmed at the edges and still standing; requiring a judge’s approval before a dissolution takes effect would change that.
July 2026: The candidate and the court¶
On 7 July 2026 the Paris Court of Appeal upheld Marine Le Pen’s embezzlement conviction but set her ineligibility at 45 months, 30 of them suspended, which the time already served covered, saying that further ineligibility “would undermine the democratic principle of freedom of candidacy and the voters’ right to choose”. She was sentenced to three years, two suspended, the third under house arrest with an electronic tag. The clerks note that the court weighed the electorate’s choice explicitly, and left the leader of the far right free to stand.
January 2025: A second decree annulled¶
On 27 January 2025 the Conseil d’Etat annulled the decree of 3 April 2024 that had dissolved Defense Collective, a group in Rennes, finding that the posts of a local media outlet on which the decree mainly relied could not simply be attributed to the group, and that it “ne resulte pas de l’instruction que l’auteur du decret aurait pris la meme decision” without them. The clerks note that the judge again undid a dissolution after it had taken effect, this time because the file did not show what the decree claimed.
November 2023: The decree annulled¶
On 9 November 2023 the Conseil d’Etat annulled the decree dissolving Les Soulevements de la Terre, an environmental collective. It found the dissolution “was not appropriate, necessary and proportionate to the seriousness of the disturbances”, and that the group “could not be accused of inciting violence against individuals”. In the same decisions it upheld the dissolution of three other groups, GALE, Alvarium and CRI. The clerks note that the dissolution came first, by decree of the government, and the judge afterwards.