The observatory is dead, long live the interministerial committee!

The decree abrogating the Observatory of Secularism, created in 2013 and on the spot for several months, and establishing in its place an “interministerial committee of secularism” placed under the supervision of the Prime Minister, appeared this Saturday in the Official Journal.

This new body "coordinates and monitors the implementation of government action in order to ensure the promotion and respect of the principle of secularism within state administrations, local authorities and others. public or private law persons entrusted with a public service mission ”, according to the decree.

It will bring together the Ministries of the Interior, National Education and the Public Service and will have a "secretariat" under the aegis of the Interior.

The committee will disseminate the "rules relating to the principle of secularism" and ensure their "implementation".

It will contribute "to the definition of the training requirements which must meet any public official in the matter", continues the text.

The Observatory of secularism contested for several months

A consultative body set up in 2013, the Secularism Observatory brought together representatives of ministries, experts and parliamentarians, was responsible for advising the government, through opinions and reports.

He had been in the hot seat for several months.

Its mission was also to educate schools, businesses and administrations on the principles of secularism (state neutrality, freedom of conscience and religion while respecting the laws of the Republic, etc.).

For several years, it had been accused by certain political leaders of being too lax vis-à-vis Islamism, which its leaders have always defended, supported by numerous associations.

This controversy resurfaced in October after the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty in front of his college in Yvelines.

Prepare the application of the "separatism law"

The government assures us that this new committee does not go “against the Observatory” and that “it will capitalize on the field work” carried out over eight years.

The objective, underlines Matignon, is to "prepare the concrete application" of the bill "consolidating the principles of the Republic", which must be definitively adopted by the Parliament by the summer truce, by being "operational" and "Effective".

This bill provides for "an obligation of training in the requirements of the principle of secularism for all public officials" and "the creation of secular referents in all administrations", among others.

A "lost added value"

“Why abolish the Observatory, an interministerial body which also brought together experts and parliamentarians, to replace it with a new purely administrative interministerial body?

“Regretted its president, Jean-Louis Bianco, whose term ended in April.

The "added value" provided by its autonomy, made possible by the presence of experts, "will be lost", ruled the former socialist minister, who was received by Jean Castex on Friday morning.

"The training set up for the city policy districts" by several bodies, including this Observatory, "gives excellent results", he also underlined.

"It is a resumption of state control of the issue of secularism," said Philippe Portier, a specialist in secularism at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.

Last April, with a collective of 119 academics, he warned the government against the temptation to make secularism a “tool of repression, control and prohibition”.

With this very "centralized" mode of management of secularism, there is "the idea that it is necessary to avoid a plurality of voices inside the public space", lamented Philippe Portier, who also noted that the new Committee no longer included the “observation” and “analysis” dimensions of the Observatory.

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  • Society

  • Matignon

  • Secularism