The principle of equality in the French Constitutional Council’s case-law: what changes after ten years of ex post review implementation?

Abstract

In France, the principle of equality has its source in a set of at least fifteen articlesbelonging to one of the three constitutional texts that form the “constitutional block”. Because of this privileged place, which is incomparable with regard to other fundamental rights and freedoms, the principle of equality figured in almost a half of the decisions pronounced by the Constitutional Council from its creation till 2010, when the ex post review – called “procedure of QPC” – began to be implemented in France. Despite the relevant statistics, the constitutional judges’ activity in this field was marked by voluntary self-restraint. The object of this study is to analyse if in the first ten years of QPC procedure implementation their approach has changed in order to strengthen the protection of the litigants’ rights and what are the technics of control they use in order to realise such changes.

Keywords

• french constitutional council
• ex ante review
• ex post review
• concrete control
• abstract control
• techniques of constitutional control
• constitutional block
• principle of equality
• self-restraint
• protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms