Icon: enlarge
French National Assembly (symbol image)
Photo: CHARLES PLATIAU / REUTERS
France is discussing the headscarf again: the debate was triggered because MEPs had left a parliamentary committee meeting.
They were bothered by the invited representative of a student union who wore a headscarf.
Former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal said on Friday that she would have left the room too.
"Religious rules must never take precedence over civil rules, state rules, the rules of the republic," she told the broadcaster BFMTV.
The incident occurred on Thursday morning at a committee meeting that dealt with the effects of the corona crisis on youth.
Maryam Pougetoux, who appeared with a headscarf, was invited for the Unef student union.
Pierre-Henri Dumont of the conservative Republicans complained that this violated the principle of secularism.
He and a few party colleagues left the room.
Opinions differ in Macron's presidential party
Finally, the MP Anne-Christine Lang from the presidential party La République en Marche (LREM) also left.
The headscarf is incompatible with her values, she said earlier.
There is no rule that prohibits the wearing of religious symbols by a person who appears in front of a committee, stressed the chairwoman of the committee, Sandrine Mörch, also a LREM MP.
"It is scandalous that a member of parliament attacked a veiled student in 2020," the student union Unef responded on Twitter.
Several conservative and right-wing politicians, on the other hand, called for the rule for wearing religious symbols in parliament to be tightened.
Wearing conspicuous religious symbols or uniforms has so far been prohibited for MPs.
In France, debates about the headscarf have flared up again and again.
A heated argument broke out last year because a mother in a headscarf accompanied students on a school trip.
The headscarf and other visible religious symbols have been banned in state schools for around 15 years.
Icon: The mirror
asa / dpa