France Used Anti-Terror Orders to Keep Dozens Out of Protests

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told lawmakers on November 3 that he had personally signed "more than a hundred" MICAS orders tied to the protests, insisting they hit "the upper end of the spectrum" of France's counterterrorism radar. Le Canard enchaîné paints a different picture. Citing "several senior civil servants", the satirical weekly reported that the idea came from Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, who ordered mass use of the measures while running the Interior Ministry during the Paris Olympics — and that the government has now suspended them against protesters after public outcry.

MICAS stands for "individual measure of administrative control and surveillance". It grew out of the house arrest orders issued under the state of emergency declared in the early hours of November 14, 2015, after France's deadliest terrorist attacks, and was written into law by a Counter-Terrorism Act two years later. The Interior Ministry can use it when there are "serious reasons" to see a grave security threat and terrorist ties. Those hit must report to a police station weekly or daily, sometimes twice a day. Breaking the rules carries three years in prison and a €45,000 fine. The law says the power exists "solely for the purpose of preventing acts of terrorism from being committed".

Lawyers say that is not what happened. Aïnoha Pascual, who represents several people barred from the October 24 and 31 protests, called it "the first time such measures are taken against political activists, by attempting to put a 'terrorist' label on them", and denounced "a complete perversion of counterterrorism laws". Jean-Baptiste Soufron of the Association for the Defence of Constitutional Liberties said the orders hit people "where there is absolutely no terrorist threat whatsoever", adding: "They're not even aimed at rioters." Those targeted included students, trade unionists, far-left activists and environmental campaigners with no criminal record — most never investigated for terrorism. It was the biggest use of the power since the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics, when more than 500 people were told to stay home or keep away from venues, and several lost their jobs.

The process skips a judge. Decisions rest on intelligence reports, can target people with clean records, and only face court challenge afterwards. Soufron said the protest bans were often issued at the last minute, "effectively making it impossible for a judge to examine them in time". Nicolas Klausser, a researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch, said the setup lets the Interior Ministry "determine for itself who constitutes a terrorist threat", when that call normally belongs to a judge. Le Canard enchaîné reported that only "a handful" of those targeted are actually monitored by counterterrorism services, describing the rest as "small fry linked to far-left groups".

Klausser said the orders appear to have come from the top down rather than bubbling up from intelligence warnings, and that critics of the 2017 law had warned it left room for abuse. He tied the push to a wider effort to cast far-left activists as a grave threat — a theme Darmanin has pressed since coining the term "ecoterrorists" in 2022, after clashes over giant farm irrigation reservoirs. Ministers blamed "ultra-left" groups for the October 17 unrest, but at fast-tracked trials most of those convicted turned out to be opportunistic looters with no political leaning. Pascual said words like "ecoterrorism", "insurrection" and "sabotage" are "routinely brandished as bogeymen to instil fear and then justify labelling political activists as terrorists".

The Interior Ministry has defended the orders, calling the protests "insurrectionary" and pointing to the fire that gutted Limoges town hall on October 17 plus online calls to target symbols of capitalism and the state as proof of intent to "seriously disrupt public order by intimidating the population and the public authorities". That argument ran into trouble at a Paris court hearing on Tuesday, where it was broadly rejected — including by the public rapporteur, the judge tasked with giving an independent opinion on the case.