Court victory a technicality

A victory has been won in the French courts in the battle between the profession and the right-wing Front National (FN). But, contrary to some reports this month, it is a small victory indeed and is unlikely to have any major effect on the issue as a whole.

An administrative tribunal in Marseille considered the case put by 11 library users in the town of Marignane, one of the FN-controlled areas, where librarians have complained of political interference in stock selection and display.

The specific complaint was about the removal of the left-wing national daily Lib&eacuteration, the regional communist daily La Marseillaise and the weekly L'Ev&eacutenement du Jeudi. These publications were replaced by three publications from the extreme right: Pr&eacutesent, Rivarol and National Hebdo, at the insistence of the Deputy Mayor.

The court found in the users favour, ordering the authority to review the situation and 'look again at the list of publications it makes available to its users' within two months, or pay a fine for each day that it fails to do so, and to pay each of the users 800 francs towards their legal costs.

This has been received in some quarters as a key victory for librarians. However, French sources are calling into question the significance of the decision which was taken on purely technical grounds.

While arguments about civil liberties and the rights of man were heard by the court and referred to in the judgement's preliminaries, they did not form part of the ruling. The court sits to rule on the legal behaviour of local politicians under the local government legislation of 1982 and more normally deals with accusations of corruption.

Because there is no statutory obligation on libraries in France (see July Record), it is not possible to rule that local politicians are impeding librarians in their statutory duty legislation. The decision in question was taken purely on the grounds that the politician concerned does not have culture as part of his brief and so was operating outside his jurisdiction.

So while the decision has been reversed, it lies within the power of the mayor to take the same decision again, as long as he takes it himself. Or, indeed, he could add culture to the brief of the Deputy Mayor, thus enabling the same man to make the same decision. And next time round it would be perfectly legal.

However, similar attempts have been made in the past to make FN authorities see the error of their ways, not least by the Ministry of Culture - but this latest decision still leaves them room for manoeuvre.

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