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POLITICS

French President Emmanuel Macron announces new crime-fighting plans

He has yet to officially declare his candidacy for the 2022 presidential election, but France's incumbent leader has announced a raft of new law-and-order policies designed to appeal to voters on the right.

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to take a number of measures to boost law and order in France.
French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to take a number of measures to boost law and order in France. (Photo by Daniel Cole / POOL / AFP)

French President Emmanuel Macron proposed a range of tough new measures to tackle crime during a visit to Nice on Monday.

READ MORE French presidential runner Pécresse to ‘power wash’ crime-hit areas

Macron said he wanted to increase France’s interior security budget by €15 billion over a five-year period, amounting to a 25 percent increase on current spending. 

The French president has yet to declare his candidacy to be reelected at this year’s presidential election – although it is thought highly likely that he will run – but these politcies could only be voted on after the presidential race is complete in May.

He also proposed

  • automatically issuing fines to people who would otherwise be sentenced to less than one year in prison
  • adding a further 1,500 staff to the cybercrime force
  • tripling the fine for harassment in the street to €300
  • doubling the number of police on public transport
  • doubling the number of police in the streets. 

READ MORE Macron announces greater scrutiny of French police after racism and violence cases

Macron said that 10,000 new policing jobs had been created since the start of his presidency and that he would work to ensure that police and gendarmes would be freed from administrative tasks to allow them to spend more time patrolling the streets. 

He also announced that 200 gendarmerie brigades would be set up in the countryside to “bring tranquility back to the most rural areas.”

Macron also vowed to set up a “republican action force for the neighbourhoods”, by which he means deprived city suburbs. 

READ MORE Who’s who in the crowded field vying to unseat Macron in French presidential election? 

“In the most difficult neighbourhoods, [it] will allow us to deploy dedicated security forces over several months which will come to make the neighbourhood safer, aiming to dismantle the principle drug dealing points,” he said. 

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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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