The offence of indignité nationale was meant to fill a legal void: while the laws in application in 1939 had provisions against treason, murder and such crimes, they did not take into account reprehensible behaviours which occurred during the occupation and in the Vichy regime, such as participation in the Waffen SS or in the Milice.
[4] Charles de Gaulle was inclined to leave the post-war purges to ad hoc decisions of the judges, relying solely on the 1939 statute that punished treason with death.
[6] De Gaulle and his government needed a legal instrument which, unlike the 1939 law on treason, would not involve harsh sentences and could thus be applied to a wide circle of offenders.
Several "suitcase carriers" of the Jeanson network were sentenced long after 1951, not for having aided the Axis, but for having "attacked the unity of the Nation, or the liberty of the French people, or the equality between them.
After deputy Philippe Meunier of the UMP previously brought the idea before the National Assembly in November 2014, it was taken up again by Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Anne Hidalgo.
Socialist deputy Jean-Jacques Urvoas, author of a 2015 parliamentary report on the issue, declared himself for a dégradation républicaine ("Republican demotion") instead of indignité nationale.