PARIS — The French government on Tuesday moved a significant step closer to making permanent some of the emergency measures put in place after the terrorist attacks of 2015, expanding the powers of the security forces to combat terrorism in ways that critics say may also curtail civil liberties.
The legislation, approved by a wide margin in the lower house of the French Parliament, codifies measures like search and seizure and house arrest without judicial review — steps once considered exceptional — and effectively institutionalizes a trade-off between security and personal liberty.
The upper and lower houses of Parliament still need to smooth over differences in their versions of the bill before a final vote this month, but most of the provisions are expected to stand in their current form.
