프랑스 공법상 외국인의 지위

Traditionally, the constitutional texts of the French Republic have cared little about resident foreigners, who had only a marginal presence without political voices to speak of. However, in the present era of globalization with unprecedented volume and speed of human mobility, it is not difficult to find a considerable size of sub-societies of resident foreigners any more within a territory of civilized country. Therefore, although nationals constitutes the largest part of the population as ever in most of the countries, it is not enough for a Constitution to keep only nationals in mind in order to maintain its normative power effectively as an overarching blueprint that covers the every aspects of human society. The French Constitution of 1958 and its amendments have provisions on local and european election as well as asylum which targeted at foreigners but remain silent in the rest of the subjects. So, the constitutional status of foreigners has mainly been specified through judicial precedents. In the 1990 reading case, the Constitutional Council of French Republic rules that the Parliament can make discriminative legislations on foreigners, but those legislations remain constitutional to the extent that it does not violate the international treaties signed by France and that it pays respect to the fundamental freedoms and rights of constitutional values enjoyable by everyone in the Republic. The Constitutional Council refers to the right to exercise individual liberty and security, in particular the freedom of transfer of residence, marriage, and ordinary family life as the fundamental freedoms and rights of constitutional values. That Council also rules that foreigners can enjoy social security benefits and can file a lawsuit that guarantees the fundamental freedom and rights, as long as they have held a steady and legal residency in the french territory. Foreigners who are European citizens enjoy a more favorable status than the non-citizen in the areas of immigration process, labor, elections and so on. These privileged foreigners can exercise their rights to vote in local and european elections and have access to public offices not involved in the exercise of national sovereignty. Furthermore, even foreigners without privileged status could make their political voices heard in legislative process in the negative sense, through "Question prioritaire de constitutionalité" of the Constitutional Council, which is the french counterpart of "konkrete Normenkontrolle" in german constitutional context.