Immigration: Council of State rejects Retailleau's appeal on the registration of foreigners

On Friday, July 4, the Council of State rejected an appeal by the Ministry of the Interior against the Nantes administrative court's suspension of a memorandum requesting that police services transmit information to the prefecture on legally resident foreign nationals in police custody.

The highest administrative court considers that the Nantes interim relief judge "did not commit an error of law in considering that the contested service note sets up the processing of personal data, which could only be created (...) by a ministerial decree issued after consulting the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties)" .

Last November, the interdepartmental director of the Loire-Atlantique police asked his services, in an internal note, to set up a "shuttle sheet completed by the arresting services and then communicated to the Loire-Atlantique prefecture" .

This procedure concerned "foreigners in a regular situation placed in police custody" and had to list various elements, such as the administrative situation of the person concerned, any criminal record, or elements relating to this police custody.

The administrative court suspended this note at the beginning of April, following an appeal filed by several organizations – including the Magistrates' Union, the French Lawyers' Union and the Human Rights League – considering that the "operations" provided for in this note constituted "processing of personal data" .

The lack of authorization for this processing "by a ministerial decree issued after declaration and opinion from the National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties" (CNIL), created "a serious doubt as to the legality of the contested decision" , according to the order of the interim relief judge.

The Nantes administrative court "will have to rule in the coming months, on the merits, on the legality of this memo," the Council of State recalls. Another administrative court, that of Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), suspended a similar document in May.