THIERRY ZOCCOLAN / AFP
The deputies validated a bill aimed at making the French and European flags compulsory in front of the town halls of municipalities with more than 1,500 inhabitants.
POLITICS – Consideration of this measure even divided the majority camps. The National Assembly voted on the night of Wednesday to this Thursday, May 11, a text aimed at making the French and European flags compulsory on the pediment of town halls with more than 1,500 inhabitants. A widespread use.
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.
Relaxation of the criticized text
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 “One and indivisible Republic”. “Either (the European flag) it’s important, it’s a symbol and we display it everywhere” either not, criticized the ecologist Jérémie Iordanoff, announcing an abstention on the whole of the text.
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).
Symbolic date
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, Renaissance rapporteur Mathieu Lefèvre assumes the divisive nature of his proposal to “symbolic significance”. “Those who find it difficult to hide their discomfort in front of the starry flag have just as much difficulty hiding their dreams of a disguised Frexit, 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 out the “two extremes of this hemicycle”. Rebellious and communists mocked “the attempt of diversion” of the presidential camp to try to turn the page of the 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 does not carry “no symbol”. “There are only three colors to which the French bow”he judged, “blue, white and red”.
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