This is an unprecedented decision since the launch of the competition: Makram Akrout, the baker winner of the best baguette in Paris will not deliver, as usual, the Elysee, reports The Parisian. At issue: the controversy related to the disclosure of screenshots of his Facebook account relaying “hateful opinions” vis-à-vis France.
The decision has been brewing since late last week. The 42-year-old craftsman, including 19 years of work in France after arriving from Tunisia, did not go to the ceremony on Saturday orchestrated by the city of Paris for 28 years and the bakers’ union of Greater Paris. The winner of the competition, among 173 competitors, had then put forward an “employee problem” to explain his absence.
Shortly after his victory, he was also singled out by a far-right site for relaying messages on social networks, written in Arabic, critical, even hostile, to France. “Like many Internet users, he was able to share in the past content published on social networks without grasping all the content,” said his lawyer Sylvia Lasfargeas, while the president of the bakers’ union of Greater Paris, Franck Thomasse, highlights an “error” that this “very good professional” “regrets”.