Le principe de précaution doit-il être interdit de Charte de l'environnement

The project to insert an Environmental Chart in the French Constitution has raised a public controversy about the precautionary principle introduced by article 5. Academic institutions and business organisations have expressed the strongest opinions against such an acknowledgement of the precautionary principle in a constitutional text. They put forward threats of having research and innovation blocked, of increasing undesirable trends in public management and developing legal insecurity for physicians, local representatives and top management of firms. The paper first recalls what the precautionary principle is about: a rational requirement to take an early, but proportionate account of potential risks that may generate serious and irreversible damage, without waiting for full scientific certainty. Then the paper considers the issue of the precautionary principle going drifting-off, which is the most frequent argument. The way opponents put their arguments against the precautionary principle are shown to belong to a catastrophist mode that is demonstrated to be quite an invalid way to examine such a public decision: it is ruined by inconsistency at the stage of recommendation about what to do. Moderate risks of wandering around at the implementation stage are not a sufficient reason to oppose to a constitutional acknowledgement of a social norm that brings a real progress for collective action in the field of risk management.