Grenoble: the city council authorizes the wearing of the burkini in the swimming pools of the city

End of the controversy?

The city council of Grenoble voted for the wearing of the burkini in the swimming pools of the city (29 votes for, 27 against).

This is a long-standing promise from the EELV mayor, Éric Piolle, who put the subject back on the table after the presidential election and before the summer opening of municipal swimming pools in mid-June.

Sunday, the prefecture of Isère announced that the prefect would ask the administrative court to cancel the authorization of the burkini at the swimming pool if the municipal council of Grenoble modified the regulations of the swimming pools in this direction.

"In accordance with the instructions he received from the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, the prefect of Isère will seize the administrative court of Grenoble in the event of adoption of this deliberation", indicated the prefecture in a press release.

The subject has polarized the French political class for several months and has encountered a revolt within the Grenoble city council, in particular from the opposition, for whom the burkini is only an “aquatic version of the Islamist veil”.

Concretely, it was a question of modifying the internal regulations of municipal swimming pools, in particular its article 12 which requires users to “decent dress” and “a correct attitude”.

Until now, the text required that swimmers be dressed in a swimsuit covering "at least the part between the upper thighs and the waistband and at most the part above the knees and above the elbows".

These precisions could skip in the redrafted text.

For the mayor of Grenoble, the restrictions introduced ten years ago boil down to “injunctions on the bodies of women”.

“Our desire is to lift the aberrant clothing bans: this concerns bare breasts, covering swimsuits to protect against the sun or for reasons of conviction.

The question is not to be for or against the burkini specifically”, he argues while pleading for a public service “accessible to all” and invoking the 1905 law on secularism.

An ideological clash

In a few days, the vote announced to the municipal council caused a political storm, the two camps clashing with blows of platforms, petitions and muscular positions in the press or on social networks.

In early May, the president (LR) of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region Laurent Wauquiez opened hostilities by accusing the mayor of Grenoble of "submission to Islamism" and threatening to cut off all subsidies to the city if the measure pass.

"What Mr. Piolle is defending is a terrible stalemate for our country," he said, accusing him of "making pacts with political Islam" to "buy votes", a few weeks before the elections. legislative.

Several dozen local or departmental elected officials signed calls last week to renounce a vote according to them "imposed by minority groups, whose sole objective is to permanently test the sensitivity of our institutions to the religious fact".

Some fear a domino effect, for other elected officials who would be “in the same way, tomorrow, summoned to position themselves”.

Others make a link with the wearing of the full veil that the Taliban have just imposed on women in Afghanistan.

In the other camp, a hundred personalities including feminists like Caroline De Haas or Alice Coffin, published a support column: "Muslim women have as much place in the swimming pool" as other citizens and "no one should be stigmatized even in the pools because of his choice of jersey ”.

An association in the crosshairs of the Interior

The text was written by the controversial association Alliance Citoyenne, organizer of several punching operations in Grenoble swimming pools in favor of the wearing of the burkini, since May 2019. Founded in 2012 in Grenoble, Alliance Citoyenne currently claims more than 5,000 members there. .

Today present in other cities, it supports the collective of veiled football players the Hijabeuses, mobilized against the French Football Federation (FFF) which prohibits the wearing of the veil in competition.

Read alsoBurkini in Grenoble: Citizen Alliance, an “arsonist” association behind Éric Piolle

Citizen Alliance was accused last year by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin of putting "pressure on the public authorities to promote, for the benefit of Muslims, rules compatible with Sharia".

According to our recent investigation, this association would have recorded the origins and beliefs of inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods in order to recruit them for future campaigns.