{"id":7876,"date":"2013-07-26T11:32:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T11:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=7876"},"modified":"2013-07-26T11:32:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T11:32:46","slug":"no-longer-a-crime-to-mock-french-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=7876","title":{"rendered":"No longer a crime to mock French president"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"flanby\"<\/a>Being rude to the President of France is no longer an automatic criminal offence, France\u2019s parliament agreed today.<\/p>\n

In the interests of free speech, MPs revoked legislation dating back to 1881 when anything judged to have \u2018offended the head of state\u2019 risked an automatic fine.<\/p>\n

The change followed the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling in March that France violated a demonstrator\u2019s right to freedom of expression when he referred to Nicolas Sarkozy as a \u2018jerk\u2019.<\/p>\n

Mr Sarkozy, the notoriously aggressive 5ft 5ins conservative, became the butt of numerous jokes during his five years in office, which ended last year.<\/p>\n

But when a demonstrator held up a placard reading \u2018Get Lost Jerk\u2019 at a Sarkozy meeting in western France in 2008, he received a criminal conviction and a fine of around 25 pounds.<\/p>\n

This was despite exactly the same expression being used by Sarkozy himself months earlier while he was attending an agricultural show in Paris.<\/p>\n

Last year ECHR deemed the punishment handed down to Sarkozy\u2019s tormentor as being disproportionate and a violation of freedom of expression, as the act was a \u2018satirical remark.\u2019<\/p>\n

The ECHR acknowledged that the insult constituted \u2018criticism of a political nature\u2019 for which \u2018freedom of expression was of the highest importance.\u2019<\/p>\n

Now anyone who chooses to insult a serving French president will have to be pursued through the libel courts.<\/p>\n

Francois Hollande, the current Socialist French president, is regularly mocked, often by people using his nickname of \u2018Flanby\u2019, after a wobbly caramel pudding.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month it emerged that Sarkozy views his successor as a \u2018ridiculous little fat man who dyes his hair\u2019.<\/p>\n

When Sarkozy was head of state, his third wife Carla Bruni put him on a fitness programme aimed at making him leaner, fitter and younger looking.<\/p>\n

Before that the diminutive Sarkozy – nicknamed ‘Bling-Bling’ because of his love of tacky status symbols – was himself mocked for being a chubby little man.<\/p>\n

He continued to wear platform heels, and to surround himself with smaller men in an attempt to look taller, but lost a great deal of weight through constant work-outs and giving up chocolate.<\/p>\n

Hollande, in contrast, has failed to lose the tubby image and shake off the Flanby nick-name.<\/p>\n

Opinion polls routinely reveal that Hollande is the most unpopular president in the history of the Fifth Republic, with Sarkozy a close second. – Daily Mail<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being rude to the President of France is no longer an automatic criminal offence, France\u2019s parliament agreed today. In the interests of free speech, MPs revoked legislation dating back to 1881 when anything judged to have \u2018offended the head of state\u2019 risked an automatic fine. The change followed the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) … Continue reading “No longer a crime to mock French president”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3,123],"tags":[4344,4343,4341,535,2197,4342],"class_list":["post-7876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","category-world","tag-bling-bling","tag-european-court-of-human-rights-echr","tag-flanby","tag-francois-hollande","tag-nicolas-sarkozy","tag-president-of-france"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/flanby.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7879,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7876\/revisions\/7879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}