The use is already widespread but the proposal of its obligation has caused a stir. The National Assembly voted overnight from Wednesday to Thursday a text by Macronist deputies aimed at making the French and European flags compulsory on the pediment of town halls with more than 1,500 inhabitants. After a tense examination, the bill was supported by 130 votes against 109 in the first reading and must now be examined by the Senate.
Amendments have relaxed the initial text, allowing flags to be hoisted near town halls or on their roofs and above all by exempting municipalities with fewer than 1,500 inhabitants from the obligation to display flags, for financial reasons. “The exemption concerns 70% of the municipalities of France”, denounced the deputy LR Philippe Gosselin, “it does not make sense” in a “One and indivisible Republic”. ” Either [le drapeau européen] it’s important, it’s a symbol and we display it everywhere ”or no, criticized the ecologist Jérémie Iordanoff, announcing an abstention on the whole text.
A divisive but “symbolic” proposal
The deputies voted an amendment to guarantee in all the town halls this time the presence of the official portrait of the President of the Republic, a use also widespread. Then two others to affix the motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity on their facades (Leaument amendment, LFI) or display the declaration of the Rights of Man and of the citizen inside (Gosselin, LR).
The bill, led by the Macronist Renaissance group, had been voluntarily put on the agenda on Tuesday, the anniversary of Robert Schuman’s declaration of May 9, 1950, considered a founding text of European construction, but the Tense debates spilled over into Wednesday evening. One year before the European elections, the Renaissance rapporteur Mathieu Lefèvre assumes the divisive nature of his proposal with “symbolic significance”.
“Dreams of Frexit in disguise”
“Those who find it difficult to hide their discomfort in front of the starry flag have just as much difficulty hiding their dreams of Frexit in disguise, red for some and brown for others”, he attacked, targeting rebellious deputies and RN. The Secretary of State for Europe, Laurence Boone, went further by pointing to the “two extremes of this hemicycle”.
Rebellious and communists mocked “the attempt at diversion” of the presidential camp to try to turn the page on pension reform, by a measure “without any practical utility”. At the RN, MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy launched a frontal attack against the starred flag, which according to him bears “no symbol”. “There are only three colors to which the French bow”, he judged, “blue, white and red”.