PNND France Coordinator briefs Parliament Defense Committee

On May 14, 2014, for the first time since the birth of the fifth Republic (1958) and the French Force de frappe (1960), two members of civil society were invited to testify in front of the Defence Committee of the National Assembly.

Jean-Marie Collin, French Director of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non proliferation and Disarmament (PNND), and Patrice Bouveret, co-founder and Director of the French think-tank Observatoire des Armements, briefed the National Assembly Defence Committee on the economy and utility of nuclear weapons, the need to re-evaluate nuclear deterrence, and the universal obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament.

Thirty-six parliamentarians (from all political parties) attended the hearing which lasted for one and a half hours.

Arretez la bombe!

Historically the French National Assembly and the French Senate have been rather silent on the issue of nuclear policy. However, this silence has been broken in the past couple of years following the release of two landmark books - '“Nucléaire, un mensonge français: Réflexions sur le désarmement nucléaire" (Nuclear, a French lie: Reflections on nuclear disarmament) by former Defence Minister Paul Quiles, and Arrêtez la bombe! by Paul Quiles, Jean-Marie Collin and Bernard Norlan (see also www.arretezlabombe.fr/).

In 2013 and 2014, PNND Co-President Senator Richard Tuheiava raised a number of nuclear weapons related issues and questions in the French Senate including on compensation for the health and environmental impact of French nuclear tests, and calling for France to participate in the International Conferences on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nucelar Weapons in Norway and Mexico.

In January 2014, PNND held a conference on humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons in the French Senate.

And also in January, perhaps pushed by these developments, the Defence Committee of the French National Assembly launched a series of hearings about nuclear deterrence. They initially invited key players in the French military nuclear industry, Chiefs of the French Defence Force and the UK ambassador in France to testify.

The testimony by the PNND and Observatoire des Armements representatives on May 14 was possibly the first ever direct challenge to nuclear deterrence in the Defence Committee.

"It was obviously evident, that the nuclear disarmament subject was not easy to introduce, the majority of the parliamentarians being in favour the French bomb," said Mr Collin. "So the goal was to challenge their views and provoke questions."

Jean-Marie Collin and Patrice Bouveret speaking at the Defence Committee

Mr Collin and Mr Bouveret used the opportunity to make some recommendations to the Defence Committee, in particular that the Committee:

• Work on a "post-White Paper" that expresses a concept of security without nuclear weapons, which would allow for consistency with the obligations of the NPT, the OEWG and to open the door to the European Union on this question.
• Establish a commission of inquiry in the defence committee on the possible actions of France in nuclear disarmament under the 2015 NPT Review Conference
• Initiate discussions with foreign parliamentarians including British, Swiss, American, Austrian, either directly or through organizations such as the Inter Parliamentary Union, Parliamentary Assemblies of NATO and the OSCE or the Francophonie.
• Invite civil society to testify routinely to the Committee, including in the context of the annual preparation of the defence budget.

An official report will be released soon by the Defence committee.

Click here to watch the video of the hearing