Assembly adopts new version of controversial text without Senate changes



The Assembly and the Senate do not agree on the issue of wearing the veil in the separatism law. – GILE Michel / SIPA

The Assembly and the Senate are struggling to agree on this bill presented as one of the great markers on the regal of the end of the five-year term Macron. MEPs adopted at second reading on Wednesday, in a special committee, a new version of the controversial text on separatism. However, the latter removed from the text the main modifications of the Senate which had hardened the bill. The text will be examined in session at the Palais Bourbon from June 28.

After its adoption at first reading in the Assembly, the text had been largely revised during its passage at the Luxembourg Palace with a right-wing majority. The members of the High Assembly had considerably hardened the text, adopting a series of anti-veil amendments. And had emptied of its substance the thorny dossier of home instruction, upsetting the “balance” touted by the government and LREM and recording any idea of ​​compromise in a joint committee which had, as expected, resulted in a failure.

“No agreement possible”

“On the main stumbling block, the veil, there was no possible agreement. It was not in the spirit of secularism defended by the law of 1905 (on the separation of the Churches and the State “, defended the general rapporteur of the text, the deputy LREM Florent Boudié. The Senate had adopted measures against the wearing of the veil or reinforcing the “neutrality” at the university which were therefore erased by the special committee of the National Assembly meeting since Monday.

“We have restored” the version voted by the Assembly “to avoid making the veil a pathological obsession”, tackled Florent Boudié. “The Republicans will not vote this text as it is,” announced LR deputy Eric Ciotti. “I deeply deplore the work of deconstruction that was carried out by this special commission of what the Senate had opportunely achieved”, added the elected representative of the Alpes-Maritimes. In his viewfinder, the choice to reconsider the ban on wearing the veil for accompanying schoolchildren, the ban on wearing the burkini, religious symbols for minors or “community lists during elections”.

“Completely denatured” by the Senate

“The balance of power, the power struggles within the LR clan meant that this text at the end of the Senate session had been completely distorted. It seems to me very fair that we have carried out this work of recovery ”, on the other hand greeted the deputy LREM Guillaume Vuilletet.

Presented as the remedy against the “Islamist takeover bid”, the bill contains a battery of measures on the neutrality of the public service, the fight against online hatred, the supervision of family education, the reinforced control of associations, better transparency of cults and their funding, and even the fight against virginity certificates, polygamy or forced marriages.



Source link