and no longer appreciate the utility of that freedom once they are in power. Well before becoming Prime Minister of France in 1986, Jacques Chirac, the mayor of Paris and leader of the Gaullist party, speaking to a group of American correspondents in the French capital, said, "The best press law contains just one sentence, `The press shall be free.'" Then, he added, "You should say that publicly, while you are out of power, to commit yourself. Otherwise, the temptation to act differently is too great, once you come to power." As far as I know, he never did say that publicly. And once in power, he did not follow his own sound advice. Nevertheless, Chirac's statement should not be underestimated for its innovativeness and lucidity in relation to the European Continental tradition, inherited from Rome and Napoleon, of trying to regulate and codify everything down to the smallest detail. When it comes to press freedom, this rage to codify unfortunately finds its initial democratic justification in the founding document of continental democracy, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. Article 11 reads: "Free communication of thoughts and opinion is among the most precious rights of man. Thus, all men may speak freely, write and publish, provided they be responsible for any abuse of this freedom in cases determined by law" [italics added]. That is still French constitutional law. This open door to regulate the press leads straight to what remains the basic French press law, that of 1881. Its first article grants freedom of the press and the following 50-odd articles restrict it, including the now-classic ban against insulting the President of the Republic or foreign chiefs of state. Very much in that same tradition is the French law of 1990, which, by making racist or anti-Semitic statements a criminal offence, has turned an obscure professor into a freedom-of-expression martyr by banning his writings claiming there were no gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camps. I am utterly convinced, even though I obviously cannot prove it, that if the Tito government in Yugoslavia had not prevented public utterance of ethnic hatreds and if they had been allowed to be made openly - so that they could be combated in free debate - tensions would not have festered to the point that they are now expressed with bullets not words. Following the French model, virtually every new press law or draft press law in Central and Eastern Europe first proclaims press freedom and then provides for its restriction, as prescribed by law. Thus, a new Albanian press law says in Article 1: "The press is free. It is responsible to a free and democratic basic order. The press is restricted only by the Constitution and provisions of this law." The detailed restrictions that followed, including heavy fines or up to a year in jail for so-called "punishable content," sparked a two-day general strike of Albanian journalists in protest. The Russian Federation statute on the mass media signed into law by Boris Yeltsin in December 1991 states in its Article 1 that the media "are not subject to restrictions unless so provided by the legislation of the Russian Federation pertaining to the mass media." There follow 69 articles that include: • • • • • • • • a very complex registration procedure, which may be denied. An unspecified registration fee is set. a prohibition on publication of state secrets or "any other specially guarded secret." a ban on calls for forcible change of the constitution or "the integrity of the state." forbidding incitement to ethnic, class or religious "intolerance or passions," as well as war propaganda. the right of courts to order journalists to reveal their sources, coupled with an obligation not to reveal sources unless a court so orders. mandatory publication of denials, up to twice the length of an original article or broadcast. The media whose space is thus taken over may not reply to the denial in the same issue. the right of public bodies to close meetings to the press. a ban on publication of material "designed to defame an individual or groups" because of their sex, CSCE ODIHR BULLETIN Vol. 2, No. 1 12