Paris (AFP)

The president of the Hauts-de-France region Xavier Bertrand (ex-LR) will present Tuesday to the Minister of the Interior its tracks to prohibit the lists communalists elections, pleading to consult the French on the "place" to grant laicity.

Mr. Bertrand and the patron of the senators LR Bruno Retailleau must be received Tuesday by Christophe Castaner.

The former minister put the issue of these lists on the table in mid-September, asking the government to make arrangements for the March municipal elections. Mr. Retailleau has just tabled a bill that aims to prevent the filing of lists or the financing of candidates leading a "communitarian campaign".

First "the government laughs in my face, a few weeks after things change," said Bertrand during the Grand Jury RTL / LCI / Le Figaro.

"If we do nothing," he warned, "you will have dozens and dozens of lists of this type, emanating either from Muslims in France or the Equality Justice Party" from the Franco-Turkish community. .

While the government does not seem at this stage to be in favor of upstream measures, the president of the Hauts-de-France judges that "prevention is better than cure".

According to him, it is already possible to prohibit a list "with the current texts, that is to say with the question of possible disturbances to public order, or the respect of the existing law of 1901 in its article 3 "on associations.

It would be desirable, however, to "reaffirm the character of secularism in a law". And what would "definitely settle things" would be to add secularism to article 4 of the Constitution on parties and political groupings, according to Mr. Bertrand.

Should a referendum be held? "On all these questions, we must ask the French what place they want to grant secularism" and "there is nothing better than the popular will," he says.

He points out a "deafening silence of the FN (now RN) on these issues" because in his eyes "it suits them that we have disturbances to public order".

The communitarian lists remain in France a marginal phenomenon according to the experts, who underline that nobody claims this term. Often called into question, the Union of French Muslim Democrats (UDMF) refutes this classification. The party created in 2012 has collected less than 29,000 votes in the European, with however peaks in some municipalities in the Paris region.

© 2019 AFP