Rabat – Morocco’s Constitutional Court has struck down key parts of a new law meant to reorganize the National Press Council, ruling that several provisions violate the Constitution and must be changed before the law can take effect.
In Decision No. 261/26 (case file 309/26), issued on January 22, the court said five provisions are unconstitutional, but that other contested articles do not violate the Constitution.
The case was brought by 96 members of the House of Representatives, who asked the court to review nine articles of Law No. 026.25 under Article 132 of the Constitution, before the law is promulgated. The head of government and members of both parliamentary chambers submitted written observations to the court in mid-January.
Unbalanced representation inside the press council
A central issue was how the new law designs the make-up of the National Press Council, a professional body meant to support self-regulation in the media sector.
The court ruled that Article 5(b) breaks constitutional principles because it gives publishers more seats than journalists without an objective justification. Under the law, publishers would effectively have nine representatives, while professional journalists would have seven elected representatives.
The court found this imbalance undermines the democratic basis of the body and disrupts equality and balance between the two professional groups, which the Constitution requires for an independent, democratically organized press sector.
Because the court relied on this same reasoning, it also struck down the last paragraph of Article 4, which assigns oversight of the council’s annual report specifically to the two “wise publishers” mentioned in Article 5(b). The court said limiting that role to publishers’ representatives, without including journalists’ representatives, reinforces the same lack of balance.
Monopoly over publisher seats rejected
The court also declared Article 49 unconstitutional. That provision would have allowed the single professional publishers’ organization with the most “representative shares” to win all seats allocated to publishers. If there was a tie, the organization with the largest number of employees would take all publisher seats.
The court said this approach violates the constitutional principle of pluralism for professional organizations. It emphasized that the Constitution recognizes professional employers’ organizations in the plural and that the law cannot be designed in a way that lets one organization dominate representation and exclude others that meet the legal criteria.
Rule on leadership gender and category found incoherent
The court additionally struck down the first paragraph of Article 57, which required the council’s president and vice president to represent different professional categories (journalists and publishers) and not be the same gender.
The court said the law did not include a clear mechanism to ensure both genders are represented within the publishers’ group in the first place.
As a result, the leadership requirement could become impossible to implement, creating a lack of coherence inside the law and restricting voting choices without providing a workable legal framework.
Conflict of interest in appeals body
Finally, the court found Article 93 unconstitutional because it included the president of the Ethics and Disciplinary Committee among the members of the disciplinary appeals body.
The court said this undermines neutrality, since someone involved in the first decision should not sit on the panel reviewing an appeal.
Meanwhile, the court upheld Articles 9, 10, 13, 23, 44, 45, and 55. Among other points, it said lawmakers have discretion to define which criminal convictions can lead to removal from council membership, and it found that procedures for reviewing draft laws related to the sector do not replace Parliament’s legislative role.
The decision will be sent to the head of government and the speakers of both chambers of Parliament and published in the Official Gazette.
