Chirac Endorsement - English Translation

SPEECH MADE BY
MR JACQUES CHIRAC
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
RELATIVE WITH THE RESPECT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF SECULARITY
IN THE REPUBLIC
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ELYSÉE PALACE
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 17, 2003

Mister the Prime Minister,
Messrs Presidents,
Mesdames and Ministers,
Mesdames and Members of Parliament,
Mesdames and Messrs,
The debate on the principle of secularity resounds with deepest of our consciences. It returns to our national cohesion, with our aptitude for living together, our capacity to join together us on essence.
Secularity is registered in our traditions. It is in the heart of our republican identity. It acts today neither of the refonder, nor to modify the borders of them. It is a question of making it live while remaining faithful to balances which we knew to invent and with the values of the Republic.
Here more than two hundred years that the Republic is built and renews itself while being based on the freedom, guaranteed by the primacy of the law on the particular interests, the equality of the women and the men, on the duty and right, equal opportunity, fraternity between all the French, their condition and their origin.
In our Republic, each one is respected in its differences because each one respects the common law. Everywhere in the world, France is thus recognized like the fatherland of the humans right.
But the world changes, the borders drop, the exchanges multiply. In same time, the claims identitaires or Community continue or are exacerbated, with the risk, often, of the fold on oneself, of selfishness, sometimes even of intolerance.
How the French company be able will to answer these evolutions?
We will reach that point while making the choice of the wisdom and the gathering of the French of any origines and all convictions. We will reach that point, as at the important moments our history, while seeking in fidelity with our values and our principles the force of a new start.
Start of the consciences, to rediscover with pride the originality and the size of our culture and our French model. Start of the action, to register in the heart of the republican pact the right and equal opportunity, the integration of all in the respect of the differences. Collective start, so that together, forts of this diversity which makes our richness, us portions our will, our engagement, our desire to live together towards a future of confidence, justice and progress.
It is in fidelity with the principle of secularity, hones angular Republic, beam of our common values of respect, tolerance and dialogue, which I call all the Frenchwomen and all the French to be gathered.
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Our people, our Nation, our Republic are linked by common values. These values were not essential easily. They sometimes divided the French before contributing to join together them. Often, they were forged in the painful test of these fights which cross our history and mark our memory.
Since the origins of monarchy until the tragedies of last century, long walk towards the unit drew our territory and forged our State. Edict of Nantes to the laws of separation of the Church and the State, religious freedom and the tolerance cut through a path through wars of religion and persecutions. The humans right and those of the citizen were gradually conquered, consolidated, deepened, since the Declaration of 1789 until the Preamble to 1946. They were it by the dedication of the vote for all and the voting rights of the women, the freedom of the press, the right of association and of course the combat to make recognize the innocence of the Dreyfus captain.
Abolition of the privileges, the night from August 4, with that of slavery on April 27, 1848, the Republic proclaimed with force its faith in the equality and battled without slackening for social justice, with these historical conquests which are free and obligatory education, the right to strike, trade-union freedom, the social security. It knew to tighten the hand, to make live the equal opportunity, to recognize the merit and to thus allow to promotion, until the high positions, women and men resulting from the most modest mediums. Today, we continue to advance resolutely to consolidate the women's rights.
These values melt the singularity of our Nation. These values carry our voice high and far in the world. It are these values which make France.
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Ground of ideas and principles, France is an opened, accessible and generous ground. Linked around a singular heritage which makes its force and its pride, the French people are rich of his diversity. An assumed diversity which is in the heart of our identity.
Diversity of the beliefs, in this old ground of Christendom where was also enracinée a Jewish tradition which goes up with nearly two thousand years. Ground of Catholicism which knew to exceed tearings of the wars of religion and to finally recognize all their place with the Protestants with the day before of the Revolution. Ground of opening finally for the French of Moslem tradition who are integral part of our Nation.
Diversity of the areas which gradually drew the face of our country, Island-of-France to the duchies of Brittany, Aquitaine or Burgundy, Alsace and Lorraine to the county of Nice, with Caribbean, the Indian Ocean or in the Southern Pacific.
And of course, diversity of these women and these men who, with each generation, came to join the national community and for which France initially was an ideal before becoming a fatherland.
Italian immigrants, made massively with the first industrial revolution to bring to our country their talent and their energy. Spaniards, driven out by terrible tearings of the years 1930 and come to find refuge in France. Portuguese, made in the years 1960, full with heat and courage. But also Polish, Armenian or Asian. Natives of the Maghreb and the Black Africa, which so strongly contributed to the growth of "the Thirty Glorious ones" before making stock on our ground. All contributed to forge our country, to make more extremely it more prosperous and, to increase its radiation in Europe and in the world.
Our flag, our language, our history: all speaks to us about these values of tolerance and respect of the other, these combat, this diversity which make the size of France. This France, that which fights for peace, justice, the humans right, we are proud. We must defend it. Rather than to call it in question, each one must take the measurement of what it brings to him and to wonder what it can make for it.
It is so that France remains itself which we must today answer the interrogations and defuse the tensions which cross our company.
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These factors of tensions, each one knows them.
Although carrying new chances, anxious universalization, destabilizes the individuals, the growth sometimes with the fold.
At the time when the great ideologies subside, the obscurantism and fanaticism gain ground.
Between the French nation and this A citizen's Europe who we wish, each one of us must redefine its reference marks.
At the same time, persistence even the aggravation of the inequalities, this ditch which grows hollow between the difficult districts and the remainder of the country, make lie the principle of equal opportunity and threaten to tear our republican pact.
A thing is sure: the response to these interrogations is not in infinitely small fold on oneself or of the communautarism. It is on the contrary in the assertion of our desire of living together, in the consolidation of the common dash, fidelity with our history and our values.
Vis-a-vis with uncertainties of time and world, vis-a-vis with the feeling of impotence, sometimes with the pressure of the distress, each one seeks more personal references, more immediate: family, solidarity of proximity, associative engagement. This aspiration is natural. It is even an asset. It testifies to the capacity of the Frenchwomen and the French to mobilize, act, give free course to their energy, their initiatives.
For as much, this movement must find its limits in the respect of the common values. The danger, it is the release of centrifugal forces, the exaltation of particularisms which separate. The danger, it is to want to make take precedence the particular rules over the common law. The danger, it is division, it is discrimination, it is confrontation.
Let us look at what occurs elsewhere. The companies structured around communities are often the prey of unacceptable inequalities.
The communautarism could not be the choice of France. It would be contrary with our history, our traditions, our culture. It would be contrary with our humanistic principles, with our faith in the social advancement by the only force of the talent and the merit, with our attachment with the values of equality and fraternity between all the French.
This is why I refuse to engage France in this direction. It would sacrifice its heritage to it. It would compromise its future there. It would lose its heart there.
This is why also, we have the burning obligation to act. It is neither in the opposition to progress, nor in the nostalgia, which we will find a new community of destiny. It is in clearness, imagination and fidelity so that we are.
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France knew this year still to carry, in all the fields of tensions and crisis, its word of peace and tolerance to invite the people which tear with the respect of the other.
At the interior of our borders, in the heart of our company, let us can live together while carrying the same requirement, the same ambition of respect and justice!
The equal opportunity from time immemorial was the combat of the Republic. The line of face of this combat passes from now on in the districts. How to ask their inhabitants to recognize itself in the Nation and its values when they live in ghettos with inhuman town planning, where the not-right and the law of the strongest claim to be essential?
With the reinforcement of safety, with the program of urban restoration to destroy the "bars", with the free zones intended to bring back employment and the activity in the cities, we will stop fate, we will find the hope. It is, for the Government and myself, a major challenge and a requirement.
To make live the equal opportunity, it is also to give again all its force with our tradition of integration by supporting us on the already acquired successes but also by refusing the unacceptable one.
Many young people resulting from the immigration, whose French is the mother tongue, and who are, most of the time, of French nationality, succeed and feel at ease in a company which is theirs. They must be recognized for what they are, for their capacity, their course, their merit. They want to express their successes, their thirst to act, their insertion, their full membership of the national community.
These successes, they also should be prepared with the foreigners who join us legally, in their asking to adhere to our values and our laws. It is all the object of the contract of reception and integration set up by the Government, with my request, and which is proposed to them individually. It gives them access to French courses, with a formation with the French citizenship, with a social follow-up, n the other hand of the commitment to respect the laws of the Republic scrupulously.
These successes, they should also be made possible while breaking the wall of silence and the indifference which surrounds reality of discriminations. I know the feeling of incomprehension, of distress and sometimes even of revolt of these young French resulting from the immigration whose applications pass to the basket because of the consonance of their name and who are, too often, confronted with discriminations for the access to housing or even simply for the entry in a place of leisure.
One needs an awakening and an energetic reaction. It will be the mission of the independent authority charged to fight against all the forms of discriminations which will be installed from the very start of the next year.
All the children of France, whatever their history, whatever their origin, whatever their belief, are the girls and the wire of the Republic. They must be recognized like such, in the right but especially in the facts. It is while taking care of the respect of this requirement, it is by the recasting of our policy of integration, it is by our capacity to make live the equal opportunity that we will give again all his vitality with our national cohesion.
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We will also do it while making live the principle of secularity, pillar of our Constitution. It expresses our will to live together in the respect, the dialogue and the tolerance.
Secularity guarantees the freedom of conscience. It protects freedom to believe or not to believe. It ensure each one the possibility of expressing and of practising its faith, peacefully, freely, without the threat to see itself imposing other convictions, other beliefs. It allows women and men come from all the horizons, of all the cultures, to be protected in their beliefs by the Republic and its institutions. Opened and generous, it is the privileged place of the meeting and the exchange where each one is found to bring the best to the national community. It is the neutrality of the public space which allows the harmonious coexistence of the various religions.
Like all freedoms, the freedom of expression of the beliefs can find limits only in the freedom of others and the observation of the rules of the life in company. Religious freedom, that our country respects and protects, could not be diverted. It could not call into question the common rule. It could not attack the freedom of conviction of the others. It is this subtle, invaluable and fragile balance, patiently built since of the decades, which the respect of the principle of secularity ensures. This principle is a chance for France. This is why it is registered with the article first our Constitution. It is why it is not negotiable!
After having torn France at the time of the adoption of the great republican law of separation of the Church and the State in 1905, an alleviated secularity made it possible to gather all the French. With the test of soon a century of existence, it showed its wisdom and collects the adhesion of all the confessions and all the currents of thought.
However, in spite of the force of this republican asset, and like in particular showed it work of the Commission chaired by Mr Bernard Stasi, to which I want to again pay a homage very particular, the application of the principle of secularity in our company is today in debate. Admittedly, it is seldom disputed. Many even is claimed some. But its implementation concretes runs up, in the world of work, in the public services, in particular at the school or the hospital, difficulties new and growing.
One could only tolerate, under cover of religious freedom, one disputes the laws and the principles of the Republic. Secularity is one of the great conquests of the Republic. It is a crucial element of social peace and national cohesion. We cannot let it weaken. We must work to consolidate it.
For that, we must ensure indeed the same respect, the same consideration with all the great spiritual families. In this respect, Islam, more recent religion on our territory, have all its place among the great religions present on our ground. The creation of the French Council of the Moslem Worship makes it possible from now on to organize the relations between the State and the Islam of France. The Moslems must have in France the possibility of having places of worship allowing them to practise their religion in dignity and peace. In spite of recent progress, it should be recognized that it remains still much to make in this field. A new step will be also crossed when the formation of French Imams is ensured and makes it possible to affirm the personality of an Islam of French culture.
The respect, the tolerance, the spirit of dialogue will be also enracineront with the knowledge and the comprehension of the other to which I attach greattest importance. This is why it appears paramount to to me today to develop the teaching of the religious fact at the school.
It is necessary to carry out, also, with vigilance and firmness, a combat without mercy against xenophobia, racism and, in particular, counters the anti-semitism. Let us not tolerate the vulgarizing of the insult! Let us minimize any gesture, no attitude, no matter! Let us not let anything pass! It is a question of dignity.
We must reaffirm with force the neutrality and the secularity of the public utility. That of each public agent, with the service of all and of the general interest, on which is essential prohibition to post its own beliefs or opinions. It is a legal provision our, because no French must be able suspecter a public representative of authority to privilege it or to disadvantage it according to personal convictions. Same manner, the convictions of the citizen could not authorize it to challenge a public agent.
It is also necessary to reaffirm secularity at the school because the school must be absolutely preserved.
The school is to the first chief the place of acquisition and transmission of the values which we have in division. The instrument par excellence of rooting of the republican idea. Space where one trains the citizens of tomorrow to criticism, the dialogue and freedom. Where one gives them the keys to open out and control their destiny. Where each one is opened up a broader horizon.
The school is a republican sanctuary which we must defend, to preserve the equality in front of the acquisition of the values and the knowledge, the equality between the girls and the boys, the co-education of all the lesson, and in particular of the sport. To protect our children. So that our youth is not exposed to the bad winds which divide, which separates, which draws up the ones against the others.
It is not question, of course, to make school a place of uniformity, of anonymity, where the fact or the religious membership would be proscribed. It is a question of allowing the professors and the chiefs of establishments, today in first line and confronted with true difficulties, to sereinement exert their mission with the assertion of a clear rule.
Until recently, under the terms of reasonable and spontaneously respected uses, it had never made of doubt for nobody that the pupils, naturally free of living their faith, had therefore coming to the school, the college or the college out of dress of religion.
It is not a question to invent new rules nor to move the borders of secularity. It is a question of stating with respect but clearly and firmly a rule which is in our uses and our practices for a long time.
I consulted. I studied the Commission Report Stasi. I examined the arguments of the Mission of the French National Assembly, the political parties, the religious authorities, the representatives of the large currents of thought.
In conscience, I estimate that the port of behaviours or signs which express the religious membership openly must be proscribed in the public schools, colleges and colleges.
Discrete signs, for example a cross, a star of David, or a hand of Fatima, will remain naturally possible. On the other hand open signs, i.e. those whose port led to be made notice and recognize immediately through its religious membership, would not be allowed. These - the Islamic veil, whatever the name that one gives him, Kippa or a cross of obviously excessive size do not have their place in the enclosures of the public schools. The public school will remain laic.
For that a law is obviously necessary. I wish that it be adopted by the Parliament and that it is fully implemented as of the nearest re-entry. As of now I ask the Government to continue his dialogue, in particular with the religious authorities, and to engage a step of explanation, mediation, pedagogy.
Our objective, it is to open the spirits and the hearts. It is to render comprehensible with the young people concerned the stakes of the situation and to protect them from the influences and passions which, far from releasing them or enabling them to affirm their free will, force them or threaten them.
In the application of this law, the dialogue and the dialogue will have to be systematically sought, before any decision.
On the other hand, and the question was raised, I do not believe only it is necessary to add new public holidays to the school calendar, which in account already much. Moreover, that would cause heavy difficulties for the parents who work these days. For as much, and as it is already largely the use, I wish that no pupil have to excuse himself of an absence justified by a great religious festival like that of Kippour or Aït-El-Kebir, in condition naturally that the establishment was beforehand informed. It goes without saying also that important tests or examinations should not be organized these days there. Instructions in this direction will be given to the vice-chancellors by the Minister for national education.
It is also necessary to point out the elementary rules of the food together. I think of the hospital where nothing could justify that a patient refuses, by principle, to be made look after by a doctor of the other sex. It will be necessary that the law comes to devote this rule for all the patients who address themselves to the public utility.
Same manner, the Minister for Labour will have to engage the dialogues necessary and, if need be, to submit to the Parliament a provision making it possible to the head of undertaking to regulate the wearing of religious signs, for requirements holding with safety, that goes from oneself, or to the contacts with the customers.
Generally, I believe desirable that a "Code of secularity" joins together all the principles and the rules relating to secularity. This code will be given in particular to all the public civils servant and servants the day of their entry in function.
In addition, the Prime Minister will install near him an Observatory of secularity charged to alert the French and the authorities on the risks of drift or attack to this essential principle.
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Lastly, our combat for the values of the Republic must lead us to resolutely engage us in favour of the women's rights and of their true equality with the men. This combat is those which will draw the face of France of tomorrow. The degree of civilization of a company is measured initially in the place that y occupy the women.
It is necessary to be vigilant and intransigent vis-a-vis for the threats of a return behind. And they exist.
We cannot accept that some, sheltering behind a tendentious design of the principle of secularity, seek to sap these assets of our Republic which are the equality of the sexes and the dignity of the women. I proclaim it very solemnly: the Republic will be opposed to all that separates, all that cuts off, all that excludes! The rule, it is co-education because it gathers, because it puts all the individuals on an equal footing, because it refuses to distinguish according to the sex, the origin, the color, the religion.
As regards women's right, our company has still much progress to make. The new border of the parity, it is from now on the professional equality between the women and the men. Each one must become aware and act of it as this direction. I hope to engage there personally in the next weeks.
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Mesdames and Messrs,
The debates on secularity, integration, the equal opportunity, the women's right, ask us the same question: which France do we want, for us and our children?
We received in heritage a rich country of its history, its language and its culture, a strong Nation of its values and its ideals.
Our country, France, each one must be proud for it. Each one must feel agent of its heritage. Each one must feel responsible for its future.
Let us can transform the interrogations of today into assets for tomorrow. By seeking the unit of the French resolutely. By confirming our attachment with an open and generous secularity such as we knew to invent it year after year. While doing better to live the equal opportunity, the spirit of tolerance, solidarity. By resolutely carrying out the combat for the women's rights. By gathering us around the values which made and which make France.
Thus we will remain a trustful, sure and strong Nation of its cohesion. Thus we will be able to reaffirm the ambition which gathers us to build, for our country and our children, a future of progress and justice.
It one of the great challenges is launched to our generations. This challenge, we can, we must, we will raise it together.
All together.
I thank you.