French President Francois Hollande said today he was willing to extend France's state of emergency for another six months following the Bastille Day massacre, as lawmakers prepared to debate the country's tough security laws.
French MPs will mull a fourth extension of the eight-month-old state of emergency, as criticism mounted of the Socialist government's response to a slew of extremist attacks.
Hollande had announced last Thursday a planned lifting of the measures imposed after the November Paris attacks that killed 130.
But he changed tack just hours later, after a truck driver ploughed through a crowd leaving a July 14 fireworks display in Nice, leaving 84 dead.
Hollande initially proposed a three-month extension but said today during a visit to Lisbon he was "open to a further extension of three months", making a total of six months.
His remarks were seen as a concession to the opposition Republicans, who have demanded that the state of emergency -- which gives the police extra powers to carry out searches and place people under house arrest -- be maintained through the end of the year.
With elections just around the corner, the political unity seen after last year's attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has evaporated.
And the Socialists have said they will draw the line at some of the opposition's more controversial demands.
Republicans leader and former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is eyeing another run for the top job in 2017 elections, has called for anyone showing signs of being radicalised to be forced to wear an electronic tag, placed under house arrest or kept in a detention centre.
"We can't lock people up on the basis of mere suspicion, or suspicion of suspicion," minister for parliamentary relations Jean-Marie Le Guen retorted today.
