The goings-on in the French National Assembly and Senate have filled the French media and websites this past week. First there was the final vote on the bill to regulate GMO crops in France. To everyone's surprise the bill sponsored by Minister of Ecology and Environment Jean-Louis Borloo, went down in defeat creating a noisy media event. The defeat was trumpeted as a major and unexpected setback for President Sarkozy's UMP party.

As it turns out, there were very few UMP deputies present during this vote. Their reluctance to appear in the Assembly that day was partially explained by the fact that many of them objected to the bill. Another explanation was their desire to express their displeasure with the way Nicolas Sarkozy had removed the referendum requirement for Turkey's admission to the European Union (EU) without asking their opinion on the matter.

So for want of UMP deputies the bill was defeated. The news media spoke of little else. Sarko and Borloo had been routed. Assembly majority leader Jean-François Copé had failed to mobilize the deputies, the Greens had won a major victory, etc, etc... However, all of that was a "smoke screen", as Jean-Marie Le Pen called it. Yves Daoudal explains:

All of that is derisory. The government immediately convoked a "bi-cameral commission" composed of an equal number of deputies and senators, to draw up a new bill for a vote, later this month, by both chambers. This bill will pass because it is, purely and simply, the transposition into the French Constitution of two directives from the EU, and France, a vassal of Europe, has no other choice but to adopt it. These directives are already old and Brussels has been applying pressure for a long time for compliance from France.
 
The politics of appearances – that special attribute of the Sarkozy presidency – is  in full swing.

From Daoudal’s indispensable blog we learn that another vote in the National Assembly on May 14 also demonstrated the preponderance of European dictates in the daily lives of French legislators, whose job it is to transpose European directives into French law.

I dealt with this very topic in March in a post entitled Anti-Discrimination Madness. The bill deals with the definition of “indirect discrimination,” reiterating three EU directives. The EU forbids indirect discrimination. According to the EU “An indirect discrimination constitutes a disposition, a criterion, or a practice that is neutral in appearance, but which is capable of causing a particular disadvantage for persons in relation to other persons, unless this disposition, this criterion, or this practice is objectively justified by a legitimate purpose and the means to achieve this purpose are necessary and appropriate.”

Daoudal writes that the bill that was passed in March has once again been passed. In the interim the Senate added amendments resulting, as in the case of the law on GMO's, in a convocation of the bi-cameral commission that rewrote the text for a new and final vote by both chambers. The bill's purpose is to define direct and indirect discrimination in accordance with the EU requirements.

What exactly had the Senators changed? It seems they removed a verb to reduce the ambiguity surrounding the notion of "intent".
 
Isabelle Vasseur, recorder for the bi-cameral commission explained that the Senate had questioned the original wording of the definition of direct discrimination as a situation in which: "a person is treated in a manner less favorable than another is, has been or would be in a comparable situation."
 
The Senate removed the conditional tense ("would be") to avoid any unjustified attribution of intent or any imaginary comparison, and in so doing disobeyed the EU directives. Mme Vasseur proposed a compromise, accepted by the bi-cameral commission, in which the conditional tense is replaced by the future anterior [a tense infrequently used in English, and even more difficult to translate than the mere conditional]. And so the new definition of direct discrimination is a situation in which: "a person is treated in a manner less favorable than another is, has been or will have been in a comparable situation."
 
Valérie Létard says approvingly: "By conserving the triple temporality, the definition of direct discrimination conforms to the demands of the European Commission."

As Yves Daoudal points out: strictly obeying the European directives means, therefore, that unjustified attribution of intent and imaginary comparisons must be permitted.
 
Some of you may want to check out a website called Stop-Discrimination, a multi-lingual EU sponsored site, where you can hone your vocabulary skills. Some of the terms defined at the site's glossary include: adultism, ageism, ephebiphobia, jeunism and Islamophobia.
 
Indirect Discrimination is defined thus:

Indirect discrimination occurs when an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would disadvantage people on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, gender or sexual orientation unless the practice can be objectively justified by a legitimate aim.
 
An example of indirect discrimination is requiring all people who apply for a certain job to sit a test in a particular language, even though that language is not necessary for the job. The test might exclude more people who have a different mother tongue.

Islamophobia is defined thus:

Islamophobia is an irrational fear or prejudice towards Islam or Muslims. Islamophobia has significantly increased in the Western world since the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001.

"Homosexuals" and "Lesbians" are both defined as:

EU citizenship confers the right to protection from discrimination on the grounds of, among other things, sexual orientation. This is enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

But notice how they define "Heterosexuality":

Heterosexuality means the attraction between two people of opposite sexes. It is characterised as a sexual orientation along with homosexuality and bisexuality.

It's strange that they feel they have to give an explicit definition of heterosexuality, but they feel no need to define homosexuality, other than to say it is protected and enshrined etc...