I think that one big reason is that there is practical difference in the two systems ... and that practical difference is favoring the French system.
The issue is that with such huge loopholes, FUTURE one might exploit them on a bigger scale than what happens in Russia.
And being constantly vigilant and opposed to such laws, is what keeps the society sane and working.
The protest in France could be officially banned, but it wouldn't stop the protesters. Whereas current Russia would bring in the army to forcefully stop protests.
I am saying that looking toward Russia laws is bad place to take lessons from. The in book laws in Russian system mean literally nothing. Wagner is illegal in Russia too, actually. Post-socialist human right activists lost and failed.
> The protest in France could be officially banned, but it wouldn't stop the protesters. Whereas current Russia would bring in the army to forcefully stop protests.
First part yes. Latter part, actually, no. Russia don't bring army within Russia for that nor need to. They have cops and secret service for that and both have enough power. But the lack of democracy in Russia did not happened because the army would systematically suppress Russian protests. (It successfully suppressed Belarusian protests and made Chechnya into vasal state. But in Russia itself, it is not the threat of army that is preventing protests.)
The "affirmative notifications" is doing absolutely nothing for democracy in Russia.
In fact, I was wrong, I thought the mayor had some interdiction power, they have none. the mayor cannot 'not allow' a protest, the prefect can. When Paris' mayor is not on the same political side 1s the government, it can lead to weird stuff (like what's happening now).
It is absolutely authoritarian. I think France was ranked as one of the most authoritative democracy, on par with Russia, turkey,a bit less than Egypt.
Those interdiction weren't used offensively until Macron though. You have to limit the area of the interdiction (can't be the whole city) and pre-2017 were easely accessible 48h before they were effective, and could be challenged in court.
In 2018-2019 they tested putting the interdiction up at the last moment, it worked, so now it's even worse, they draft the interdiction as active immediately and put a copy on the prefecture doors, do not make them available on the internet then fine everyone.
The most egregious was one that took effect at 17h but wasn't put on the door until 17h30.
What's funny is that people voted macron 'against fascism' twice, not realizing that his way is a fascism too (in this case, I mean fascism as a catch-all for ideologies coming from Cesarism/Bonapartism, as defined by Krondstadt butcher himself, Trosky, terrible man but accurate critic of his time).
> [The mayor] can refuse an organized protest [...], but cannot prohibit protests.
What’s the practical difference? I’m not sure I see one, having seen years of “oh no you can’t have your rally here, there’s extremely unfortunately some other thing nobody’s heard about happening in your primary location and renovations at your alternate one and you’ll have to move to a place two hours from city centre and by the way we sat on your notification for a month and the deadline to resubmit was two days ago”.
(Legally, the Russian system is that of affirmative notifications, not of requests for permission, so you have to manufacture a conflict or a threat to public safety of some sort to really refuse, as well as offer an alternate location. The ECHR had a field day dismantling those excuses with about a decade’s latency, before Russia was drummed out of the Council of Europe to widespread cheering and activists were left to maybe possibly write to the OHCHR in the godsdamned UN and hope it works? I heard they’ve literally sent out more complaints now than the office has handled over the entirety of its pre-2022 history. I guess even the UN needs to have its joints greased from time to time.)