According to a report published by a prominent human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, French law enforcement can still restrict people's freedom of movement and force them to not contact certain people, among other things, based solely on assumptions and vague criteria.
"Measures introduced under the state of emergency were intended to be exceptional and temporary, but have now been firmly embedded into ordinary French law. They are damaging people's lives by ruthlessly stripping away basic rights," Amnesty International's West Europe researcher Rym Khadhraoui was quoted as saying by the watchdog's official website.
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Amnesty International stressed further that administrative control measures were open to "abuse and discriminatory application, including toward Muslims," as a result of providing authorities with substantial discretion "to penalise people outside of the normal criminal justice system."
The watchdog's comment comes after France adopted a new law, meant to reinforce national security and combat terrorism, that preserved some of the measures applied as part of the state of emergency, which was enforced in France in 2015 following the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13. However, in October 2017, President Emmanuel Macron ended the state of emergency.
