## Facts

- A group of National Assembly deputies referred a statute concerning Corsica to the French Constitutional Council for pre-promulgation constitutional review under the Constitution’s abstract review procedure.
- The statute reorganized Corsica’s institutional arrangements and expanded the Assembly of Corsica’s role in proposing regulatory and statutory changes affecting Corsican governance and development.
- Key provisions allowed Corsican institutions to request parliamentary authorization to adopt rules specific to Corsica’s characteristics and to propose changes to statutes applicable to Corsica.
- The statute also addressed education by providing that the Corsican language would be taught as a subject within the normal timetable of nursery and elementary schools in Corsica.
- The challengers argued that parts of the statute effectively transferred legislative-type normmaking power to Corsican bodies and that the language provision could operate as compulsory instruction, raising constitutional concerns tied to equality and the status of French as the Republic’s language.

## Issues

1. Whether the statute unconstitutionally conferred autonomous normmaking power of a legislative character on Corsican institutions, contrary to the unitary and indivisible Republic and the constitutional allocation of legislative authority.
2. Whether territorial differentiation through authorization mechanisms and experimentation for Corsica was constitutionally permissible if controlled by Parliament and consistent with equality.
3. Whether providing Corsican-language teaching “within the normal timetable” made it effectively compulsory, violating equality and constitutional language principles, or could be upheld through a binding interpretation.

## Decision

- The Council declared unconstitutional the provision granting Corsican institutions normmaking powers of a general and impersonal nature equivalent in character to legislation (the IV of the relevant code article as amended), and also struck corresponding words in a related article.
- The Council upheld the remainder of the statutory scheme that preserved parliamentary control over any Corsica-specific rules or experimentation.
- The Council upheld the education provision on Corsican language only subject to an interpretive reservation that the instruction must be optional for both students and teachers.
- The Council declined to raise additional constitutional issues on its own initiative beyond those addressed.

## Legal Principles

- Territorial collectivities may participate in decentralization and local administration, but they cannot be granted an autonomous category of legislative power absent constitutional authorization.
- Parliament may allow territorial differentiation and experimentation only if national control is maintained, the scheme is structured and reviewable, and constitutional requirements—especially equality—remain satisfied.
- A provision offering regional-language instruction during normal school hours is constitutional only if it does not impose compulsory participation and is implemented as strictly optional for pupils and teachers.
- The Constitutional Council may preserve legislation through binding reservations of interpretation that condition constitutionality on specified limits in application.

## Conclusion

The Constitutional Council upheld most of the Corsica statute while invalidating a core clause that would have created unconstitutional, quasi-legislative normmaking by Corsican institutions, and it sustained Corsican-language instruction in public primary education only on the condition that it remain strictly optional for both students and teachers.


Law on Corsica (Loi relative à la Corse), Decision 2001-454 DC, Rec. 70 (Cons. const. 2002)