French Far-Right Politician Faces Legal Action Over Controversial Social Housing Remarks

"Immigrants are not foreigners. There are French immigrants who come, who have become French, but who come from the other side of the Mediterranean. And everyone knows today [...] that social housing are lands of Islamization of the country," Eric Zemmour had said on France Inter, Monday, February 7. "Especially the poor people [...] who have remained, who have not been able to flee these social housing that have become dens of kebabs and veiled women, not to mention drug trafficking. These poor French or other immigrants who can no longer stand to find what they left behind in Algeria, Morocco and elsewhere," he had added.

The remarks of Léa Salamé’s guest provoked strong reactions from tenant and housing associations. "The 11 million social housing tenants who live in the social housing stock, the 80,000 employees and administrators who work daily to help modest households cope with economic, social or security difficulties, are insulted by these remarks from Mr. Zemmour, which are only intended to exacerbate the tensions in society against them," Emmanuelle Cosse, president of the Union sociale pour l’habitat (USH), reacted to the newspaper Le Monde. Her association filed a complaint for "offense of incitement to racial discrimination or hatred" and "offense of public racial defamation". The Consommation logement et cadre de vie association wants to join this complaint as a civil party.

"Our organization will never accept that the hatred of the racist candidate Eric Zemmour against the inhabitants of social housing, foreigners and veiled women, can be poured out with impunity," the Confédération nationale du logement (CNL) said in a statement. This organization has also filed a complaint against the 2022 presidential candidate, Le Parisien reported.