FRANCE’S ACRIMONIOUS three-month debate on national identity wound down yesterday, when prime minister François Fillon announced a series of mostly symbolic measures aimed at improving social cohesion.
After a special cabinet meeting on the identity debate, Mr Fillon outlined plans to strengthen civic education in schools and to require newly naturalised citizens to sign a charter of rights and responsibilities.
A copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man is to be displayed in all of France’s classrooms.
The new measures also include wider availability of French language classes for adults and the creation of a commission charged with “deepening the debate” on national identity. It will be made up of members of parliament and intellectuals.
Mr Fillon said that since the “great debate on national identity” was initiated by minister for immigration Éric Besson last October, more than 340 local meetings had taken place across the country, while the dedicated website had received 750,000 visitors and recorded 58,000 written contributions.
Although the public stage of the debate has ended, Mr Fillon was keen to stress that yesterday’s meeting would not be the last devoted to the subject.
He indicated that President Nicolas Sarkozy would make a speech on the topic after regional elections that take place next month.
The identity debate has been mired in rancour from the beginning.
Mr Besson said there was a need to redefine what it meant to be French after decades of tumultuous social change, but opposition parties saw it as a stratagem by the ruling UMP party aimed at prising voters from the National Front before the regional elections.
The debate itself soon focused on two issues: France’s immigration policies and the practice of Islam in France, causing Muslim representatives to express increasing anxiety that it was stigmatising all practitioners of the faith.
With tensions having risen after a decision by Swiss voters in November to ban the building of new minarets, and political discussions over how to restrict the wearing of face-covering veils in France, even some leading members of the UMP joined the opposition in declaring their unease with the debate.
Yesterday’s “governmental seminar”, chaired by Mr Fillon, was considerably more low key than the major conference, hosted by Mr Sarkozy, that was originally due to mark the conclusion of the debate – a sign, some believe, that the government wished to end the debate quietly.
However, Mr Fillon yesterday insisted that the government stood over the decision to initiate the debate and was satisfied it had been handled correctly.
“If it were to be done again, we would do things in the same way,” he said. “In a way, the debate that Éric Besson organised was exemplary.”
A prominent French Muslim group reported that swastikas and racial slurs were painted on the walls of a mosque in the town of Saint-Étienne in the Loire region yesterday morning.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith said such vandalism had multiplied in France “in a very worrisome way” and reiterated a demand for the government to create a parliamentary commission to look into rising Islamophobia.
This week’s incident is the second such case in just over two months. In December, Nazi slogans were daubed on a mosque in the southern town of Castres.