French Parliament Passes Controversial Anti-Separatism Bill, Tightening Rules on Public Service and Education

After more than seven months of back and forth between the Palais-Bourbon and the Senate, the deputies validated the bill entitled "respect for the principles of the Republic", reports the AFP. The text contains a battery of measures on the neutrality of the public service, the fight against online hatred, the protection of civil servants and teachers, the regulation of homeschooling, the strengthened control of associations, better transparency of cults and their financing, or the fight against certificates of virginity, polygamy or forced marriages.

The LFI, Communist, Socialist and Les Républicains (LR) deputies voted against, for different reasons. Before the vote, the LFI deputy Jean-Luc Mélenchon defended a last motion against an "anti-republican law" with an "anti-Muslim vocation" but it was rejected. According to François de Rugy (LREM), president of the special commission, the text is "of general scope" and "does not deal with relations with a single religion".

Trade union associations had meanwhile protested against this project. "We are alarmed by this project which again fragments French society and casts a generalized suspicion on people of the Muslim faith, as on all associations, engaged citizens and citizens," they had reacted.