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POLITICS

Hollande: I’ll tear up EU fiscal pact

French Socialist flag-bearer Francois Hollande, the opposition candidate seen as favourite to unseat President Nicolas Sarkozy in May, said Monday he would renegotiate last week's EU fiscal pact.

Hollande: I'll tear up EU fiscal pact

Hollande said if elected he would seek to persuade his European partners to issue joint eurobonds to pool their sovereign debt, to allow greater European Central Bank intervention on bond markets and to agree stimulus measures.

All of these measures were explicitly opposed by European heavyweight Germany in the run-up to last week’s hard-fought deal, which serving EU leaders hope will stabilise the debt-ridden eurozone economy.

Hollande’s Socialists have accused France’s right-wing leader Sarkozy of capitulating to German pressure, while he has accused them of undermining French policy by talking down his deficit reduction plan.

Asked on RTL radio whether he felt bound by the deal Sarkozy signed last week, under which EU states will submit to tight mutually-enforced spending controls, Hollande told RTL radio: “We’ll see.”

The detail of the pact has yet to be agreed and EU leaders aim to agree the new plan by March, meaning it will largely fall to the winner of France’s two-round April and May election to enforce its end of the bargain.

“If I’m elected president I’ll renegotiate this deal to include what is missing today,” Hollande said, adding that he hoped France would not lose its top “Triple-A” debt rating between now and the poll.

“I’d see to it that we add … ECB intervention, eurobonds and a financial bail-out fund to respond to what is today the pressure of the markets, and, finally, what we need is growth,” Hollande argued.

Hollande said he would work with a new French parliament due to be elected in June to draw up a plan aiming to eliminate the budget deficit by 2017.

Sarkozy’s government has vowed to balance the books by 2013.

Sarkozy has begun to make up ground on his challenger, but all opinion poll organisations still predict a Hollande win in the second round of voting.

POLITICS

French parliament backs bill against hair discrimination affecting black women

France's lower house of parliament on Thursday approved a bill forbidding workplace discrimination based on hair texture, which the draft law's backers say targets mostly black women wearing their hair naturally.

French parliament backs bill against hair discrimination affecting black women

Olivier Serva, an independent National Assembly deputy for the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe and the bill’s sponsor, said it would penalise any workplace discrimination based on “hair style, colour, length or texture”.

Similar laws exist in around 20 US states which have identified hair discrimination as an expression of racism.

In Britain, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued guidelines against hair discrimination in schools.

Serva, who is black, said women “of African descent” were often encouraged before job interviews to change their style of hair. Backers also say that men who wear their hair in styles like dreadlocks are also affected.

The bill was approved in the lower house National Assembly with 44 votes in favour and two against. It will now head to the upper Senate where the right has the majority and the vote’s outcome is much less certain.

‘Target of discrimination’

Serva, who also included discrimination suffered by blondes and redheads in his proposal, points to an American study stating that a quarter of black women polled said they had been ruled out for jobs because of how they wore their hair at the job interview.

Such statistics are hard to come by in France, which bans the compilation of personal data that mention a person’s race or ethnic background on the basis of the French Republic’s “universalist” principles.

The draft law does not, in fact, contain the term “racism”, noted Daphne Bedinade, a social anthropologist, saying the omission was problematic.

“To make this only about hair discrimination is to mask the problems of people whose hair makes them a target of discrimination, mostly black women,” she told Le Monde daily.

A black Air France air crew member in 2022 won a 10-year legal battle for the right to work with braided hair on flights after a decision by France’s highest appeals court.

While statistics are difficult to come by, high-profile people have faced online harassment because of their hairstyle.

In the political sphere they include former government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye, and Audrey Pulvar, a deputy mayor of Paris, whose afro look has attracted much negative comment online.

The bill’s critics say it is unnecessary, as discrimination based on looks is already banned by law.

“There is no legal void here,” said Eric Rocheblave, a lawyer specialising in labour law.

Calling any future law “symbolic”, Rocheblave said it would not be of much practical help when it came to proving discrimination in court.

Kenza Bel Kenadil, an influencer and self-proclaimed “activist against hair discrimination”, said a law would still send an important message.

“It would tell everybody that the law protects you in every way and lets you style your hair any way you want,” she said.

The influencer, who has 256,000 followers on Instagram, said she herself had been “forced” to tie her hair in a bun when she was working as a receptionist.

Her employers were “very clear”, she said. “It was, either you go home and fix your hair or you don’t come here to work”.

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