The French-American Foundation Weekly Brief

The French-American Foundation reviews what’s happened in France this week.

France

On Tuesday, May 18, a French court released the man convicted of assassinating former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar at his home outside Paris in 1991. The liberation just two days earlier of Clotilde Reiss, a young French woman held in Iran since July 2009 on charges of espionage, has brought speculations of a prisoner swap.

The French cabinet has approved a draft law to ban the wearing of full-face veils in public spaces, opening the way for the text to go before parliament in July. The bill calls for $185 fines and, in some cases, citizenship classes for women who do not comply with the ban. Addressing the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said: “Citizenship should be experienced with an uncovered face,” Al Jazeera reported. The bill would also allow prosecution of anyone convicted of forcing a woman to wear such a veil, which could carry a penalty of up to a year in prison and a fine.

Five works including paintings by modern masters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso have been stolen from the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, a heist worth around 100 million euros, according to France 24. The thief sheared off a gate padlock and broke a window to get into the Museum and then disabled the alarm system. The major tourist attraction, near the Eiffel Tower, was sealed off as police sought clues to who was behind the robbery that raises new questions about museum security in the French capital.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday, May 20 that France’s Constitution should be altered in order to compel new administrations to agree to a timetable that would help balance their budgets. In order to demonstrate his own determination to control costs, he confirmed that he planned to freeze all public spending for three years. This reform will make it an obligation for each newly-elected administration to publish a five-year trajectory for any deficits. The administration would at the same time have to announce the date at which the budget will be balanced. Last year, Germany modified its Constitution to compel its federal government to limit its public deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP, and it has called on fellow members of the eurozone bloc to adopt similar measures.

A movie directed by Rachid Bouchareb and recently presented at the Cannes Film Festival has triggered a controversy in France. “Hors-la-loi” (Outlaw) reawakens unresolved issues involving the French during the Algerian war. The film deals, in particular, with the origin of the Setif massacres of May 8, 1945 in Paris, and the event’s depiction in the movie has drawn some outcries. UMP deputy Lionnel Luca described the film as “anti-French” and accused the director of falsifying history. Luca also claimed that Outlaw is likely to inflame relations between French youth of North African origin and the rest of the population.

See also :

– Article published in Le Monde and written by several French artists and historians to defend Bouchareb’s new movie “Hors-la-loi”