EXIT-VISA OBLIGATION FOR NATIONALS OF 13 COUNTRIES RESIDING IN FRANCE
The French Interior Ministry has published a decree requiring Palestinians, and nationals of 13 countries considered to be involved in terrorism to apply for an exit-visa whenever they wish to travel abroad.
The decree was published on 12 February and applies to nationals of Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, North Korea, the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Irak, Iran, Jordan, Lybia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen, as well as to Palestinians. According to the Interior Ministry, the measure was taken in the interest of "national security". Already in 1986, during the first government of socialist-conservative "cohabitation", the then and present Interior Minister had decided a similar measure regarding about 50 "sensitive" states. But following a complaint of the GISTI, a Paris based organisation for the rights of immigrants, in May 1992, the Conseil d'Etat annulled the decree on the gounds that it violated "the fundamental freedom of coming and going which is not limited to the national territory, but includes the right to leave it".
Charles Pasqua's new decree is, however, based on a new law from 24 August 1993 allowing certain restrictions on the right of non-EC nationals legally residing in France to leave the country on national security grounds. The provision has not been censored by the Constitutional Court.
Sources at the Interior Ministry played down the importance of the decree. The exit visa, they stress, has the character of a "mere report" to the authorities and should not be compared with a requirement for special preliminary authorisation.
But a representative of the French League of Human Rights points at earlier experience showing that "certain officials of the Interior Ministry have their own, personal interpretation of legislation".
Source: Le Monde, 15.2.94