“We have a clear incentive to make this distinction (between French and foreigners), these are instructions which are directly given to elected officials,” said the public prosecutor. The prosecutor requested six months of suspended imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 euros against two of the defendants, the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais) Steeve Briois and the former national secretary of the National Front (now RN) in charge of elected officials Sophie Montel, who left the training in 2017.
Prosecuted for public incitement to discrimination
Against Marie-Thérèse Costa-Fesenbeck, deputy mayor of Perpignan, he asked for a fine of the same amount. None of the three defendants were present at the hearing. The case of MEP Jean-François Jalkh, prosecuted in the same file for public incitement to discrimination, was severed and his trial postponed to June 3, 2025 for medical reasons.
While the campaign for the early legislative elections of June 30 and July 7 has just opened, the Nanterre court rejected at the start of the hearing the defendants’ request to postpone the debates. Their defense had argued that “this idea (that of “national priority”, editor’s note) is subject to the vote of millions of French voters”.
The “court considers that a new referral would further harm the work of justice”, ruled the president of the court in reference to the previous referrals of this case, started in 2014. That year, the association La Maison des Potes , a civil party, filed a complaint against those responsible for the publication of the “Small practical guide for municipal elected officials National Front”.
In this document published before the municipal elections of March 2014, the FN recommended to its candidates “the application of the numerous points of the Front National program”, including “the national priority in access to social housing”. For Me Slim Ben Achour, one of the lawyers of La Maison des Potes, “the idea of the FN is (…) to implement segregation in France by getting rid of equality” to the detriment of foreigners and immigrants.
A discriminating “practical guide”
Mr. Briois, then general secretary of the FN, wrote the editorial prefacing the “practical guide”. Ms Costa-Fesenbeck is suspected of having put the document online on the website of the Pyrénées-Orientales federation of the FN which she led and Ms Montel of having written it. Ms. Costa-Fesenbeck’s lawyer, Me Rodolphe Bosselut, considered that there was “no offense of provoking hatred”, deploring “an attempt to criminalize an opinion”.
In addition to the Maison des Potes, the Human Rights League (LDH), the Movement against Racism and Friendship between Peoples (MRAP), the Information and Support Group for Immigrants (Gisti), the Union of lawyers of France (SAF) and SOS Racisme have also joined as civil parties, as well as several European anti-racist associations.