Laurent Wauquiez, president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, immediately announced the cessation of funding in the city. The prefect of Isère is launching an appeal to the administrative court.
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The majority of the ecologist mayor of Grenoble trembled under pressure. The modification of the regulations of municipal swimming pools, introducing the authorization of the burkini, was finally adopted in two votes, in the evening of Monday, May 16. Twenty-nine elected officials voted in favor of this deliberation, out of the fifty-eight present. The fourteen advisers from the four opposition groups voted against, and two municipal councilors abstained. Mayor Eric Piolle (Europe Ecologie-les Verts, EELV) therefore saw thirteen elected officials of his majority opposing his proposal. This is the first publicly expressed dissension within the executive led by the former pretender to the environmental candidacy for the presidential election.
The deliberation concerned several modifications to the internal regulations of municipal pools, such as compulsory support for minors from 12 years old, the obligation of bathing caps, or the expulsion period brought to one month in the event of bad behaviour. It is article 10, relating to the bathing outfits, which caught all the attention. The text prohibits floating shorts and t-shirts, and imposes “specific swimming fabrics, adjusted near the body”, which can cover the arms and legs.
four hours of debate
Without appointing it, the new regulation de facto authorizes burkini, a prized jersey of certain Muslim women, and claimed by the Citizen Alliance Association after occupations of nautical establishments. The burkini has fueled almost four hours of debate from a feverish municipal assembly, placed under the media spotlights. Tremblanting voice, damaged looks, accusing fingers: the subject has exhausted all the registers of democratic confrontation, as a concentrate of French passions, tossed between the main principles of secularism and freedom, and electoral calculations.
The opponents all considered that the authorization of the burkini opened the way to “a desire to impose dogmatism on the rest of society”, that is to say the exact opposite of freedom invoked by the mayor. Several Grenoble elected officials believe that young girls are now likely to be imposed on this “retrograde outfit”, under social pressure. The most worried opponents see in burkini the victory of an “Islamist will”. They also fear hostile reactions, generating a more complicated situation in swimming pools. Some pushing dramatization by fearing drowning, because of “these clothes full of water”.
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