• In Rennes, the port of the burkini is already authorized in the municipal swimming pools of the city.

  • In the Breton capital, the clothing of users is only conditional on compliance with health and safety rules.

  • Four years after the adoption of the new internal regulations, very few women bathe in burkinis in the swimming pools of Rennes.

The debates promise to be tense this Monday afternoon at the Grenoble city council where a new swimming pool regulation will be submitted to the vote of the elected officials.

The text aims to lift the bans in force for ten years in the city's swimming pools.

If adopted, it will allow women to swim topless or in a burkini.

But the controversy rages on this last point, dividing even the environmentalist majority.

On the right, we also shoot red bullets at Eric Piolle.

For Jean-Pierre Barbier, LR president of the department of Isère, the burkini is a "sign of dress of oppression and inferiority of women".

"It aims, purely and simply, to impose Islamist standards at the heart of bathing and public leisure areas",

Even the Isère prefecture is involved in this affair.

If the deliberation is adopted by the municipal council, it will thus seize the administrative court of the city.

Before Grenoble, the question of the burkini had already stirred up the debates a little in Rennes, where the wearing of full swimsuits for women has been authorized since 2018. Four years later, does the subject continue to divide in the Breton capital?

Do many women bathe in burkinis?

20 Minutes

takes stock.

Since when is the burkini authorized in Rennes swimming pools?

Since June 2018. Before that the burkini was not prohibited but tolerated.

In June 2018, however, a clarification was made with the adoption during the municipal council of new internal regulations for the four municipal swimming pools.

The city had then decided to no longer impose swimming trunks in the pools and to authorize shorts for men.

But also the full suits or the burkini.

Unlike the mayor of Grenoble who evokes a “question of equal access to public service”, the city of Rennes had simply mentioned health and safety reasons.

“Swimwear must comply with safety and hygiene requirements, indicates the internal regulations.

In order to preserve the quality of the bathing water, they must imperatively be in a fabric designed specifically for this use and must not have been worn before access to the swimming pool”.

The burkini meeting these requirements, it is in fact accepted in the swimming pools of Rennes.

As for the question of secularism, the city then replied that “only public service agents are subject to an obligation of neutrality, not users”.

Was this decision controversial?

It had caused a few waves but not a storm either.

In 2017, an elected member of the National Rally had already taken up the subject, asking for "a ban on the wearing of ostentatious religious attire" in swimming pools.

The burkini was then tolerated by the city, the only criterion being hygiene and safety.

"The length or the coverage of the shirt does not come into play," she said.

When the new regulations were adopted in June 2018, the issue of the burkini had not come back to the table.

It was an article in

Ouest-France

which reignited the controversy with the testimony of swimmers who were surprised to see a woman swimming in a burkini at the Gayeulles swimming pool.

The opposition then cried foul, calling the burkini a standard "of an extremist Islam incompatible with the values ​​of the Republic".

After a stormy city council in October, the controversy had gradually died out.

Where are we today?

The situation has now calmed down in the swimming pools of Rennes, where the wearing of the burkini is no longer controversial.

It must be said that very few women wear it.

Of the 900,000 swimmers who annually visit the Rennes basins, the latter can indeed be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Contacted in 2018 by

20 Minutes

, one of them had also agreed to testify.

Defending her right “not to show her body”, she then indicated that she had “never had a remark”, only “a few insistent looks”.

"But I'm not doing anything wrong," she added.

It's my choice, like others choose to be topless.

Everyone is free”.

Policy

Alpes-Maritimes: Eric Ciotti will file a bill against the burkini

Policy

Burkini in municipal swimming pools: "A non-subject which should be seen as social progress", says Eric Piolle, the mayor of Grenoble

  • Company

  • Controversy

  • Burkinis

  • Islam

  • Pool

  • reindeer

  • Grenoble

  • Brittany

  • Isere

  • Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes