On 23 January, the French Constitutional Court issued a much awaited ruling on the deprivation of citizenship of a person convicted on terrorism charges. More specifically, the Court reviewed whether the rule according to which a person who has acquired French citizenship may be stripped of its nationality if convicted of having committed a terrorist offence, could be reconciled with the prohibition of discrimination. The original legislation may be consulted here (in French). 

According to the French Conseil constitutionnel, persons having acquired the French nationality and those who have received the French nationality at birth are in principle in the same situation. However, the Court found that the French legislator did not breach the prohibition of discrimination when it used its discretion to provide that only those citizens having acquired French nationality could be subject to a measure of deprivation because the legislator aimed to fight terrorism. The Court added that if the legislator were to go further and extended the possibility to deprive of their citizenship those who have acquired their French nationality, e.g. by making it possible for the deprivation to apply for a period of more than 15 years after the person concerned became French, this would amount to a disproportionate violation of the principle of equality.

The Court refused to refer a request for preliminary ruling to the ECJ.

Read the news report in Le Monde and the ruling of the Court (in French). 

Access our current EUDO CITIZENSHIP Forum Debate on The Return of banishment? Do the new denationalisation policies weaken citizenship?, edited by Audrey Macklin and Rainer Bauböck.