The French Council of State has said that there is no legal scope to put complete ban on burqa. A report.
The Council of State, France’s top administrative court, has said there was no legal way Paris could completely outlaw full Islamic veils in public. This is a major setback to the French President, Mr. Sarkozy who hit the headlines as the advocate of complete ban on Islamic veil.
However, it would have been even more embarrassing had the councils ruling occurred after a law was passed in this issue. The Council usually rules on the legal conformity of new laws after they have been passed.
“Taking the advice of the council in advance is an unusual step, which the government did take to avoid the embarrassment of passing a stern law amid protests from French Muslims and other groups and then seeing it rejected by the top administrative court,” reads an article on Reuter blogs.
Mr. Sarkozy had said that, “The full veil is contrary to the dignity of women. The response is to ban it. The Government will put forward a draft law prohibiting it.” However he had not given any details, though, because he was waiting for the Council of State’s opinion.
The issue has been at the centre of complex and sometimes heated debate in France in recent months, but it wasn’t clear until now how far French and European law would allow the state to go.
The council in its report, presented on March 30, “There appears to the Council of State to be no legally unchallengeable justification for carrying out such a ban.”
It has also warned the government that it cannot take some of the giant steps the politicians want, and spelled out some precisely defined measures that should be constitutional.
“The full veil is contrary to the dignity of women. The response is to ban it. The Government will put forward a draft law prohibiting it.”
The Council also said that at certain points the women may be asked to not hide their faces. “However, the Council of State believes that public security and the fight against fraud, reinforced by the requirements of some public services, would be likely to justify an obligation to keep one’s face uncovered either in certain places or in performing certain procedures.”
It noted that full facial veils were already banned for civil servants and in schools, both on the basis of France’s separation of church and state (laïcité), and that managers could ban them for employees if they were deemed an impediment to the “good functioning” of the business.
But there are procedures that would require an uncovered face, it said, such as identity controls, photographs for picture IDs and legal acts such as marriage, voting, university exams, medical treatment or the handing over of children to mothers at the end of the school day.
Nevertheless, it does not mean that full veil should be banned rather women may be asked to uncover their faces on the certain occasions.
Access to certain places such as banks, jewellery shops, some sports events, consulates and airport departure lounges would also require an uncovered face, as does access to certain services such as buying drinks linked to a minimum age limit.
Nevertheless, it does not mean that full veil should be banned rather women may be asked to uncover their faces on the certain occasions.
“Public security cannot be a basis for a general ban on only the full veil, since no specific inconvenience is associated with it as such. A limited ban on the full veil would be fragile in terms of the principle of non-discrimination, and probably difficult to impose,” the report added.
It said the argument that full veils violate a woman’s dignity and the principle of equality between the sexes “could hardly apply in this case, even if they both have solid constitutional foundations and very strong jurisprudential applications”.
The Council also knocked down two of the most frequently used arguments by supporters of a full ban. It said that France’s trademark laïcité cannot be used as a legal basis to ban full veils in public, because it applies only to the relationship between public services and religions or followers of religions. It said the argument that full veils violate a woman’s dignity and the principle of equality between the sexes “could hardly apply in this case, even if they both have solid constitutional foundations and very strong jurisprudential applications”.
The supporters of a full “burqa ban” are not taking this Council recommendation lying down. Jean-François Copé, the parliamentary leader for Sarkozy’s UMP party, said the National Assembly didn’t have to follow the Council’s advice. Another staunch supporter of a full ban, the UMP deputy Jacques Myard, said the “pusillanimous opinion of the Council of State … is and remains only an opinion.”
(With Inputs from Reuter)
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