Controversy surely is however not completed

Presiding over a Council of Ministers also allows to send subliminal messages to the French. For the last Council before the summer recess (the next will take place August 25), Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday invited members of the Government to "relax, take care of their families and remain in close connection with their Department", reported Luc Chatel, the spokesman for the Government. He especially closed the year on the secure note just for some time in the hope of return to points in the opinion. Refuting the arguments advanced by the experts, the President of the Republic denied the unconstitutionality risk linked to the enlargement of forfeiture of nationality. "The measure existed in French law before 1998;" "this has been forgotten these days by some", he said, according to remarks reported by Luc Chatel.

In the morning on Europe 1, Eric Besson, Minister of Immigration, had exactly the same reasoning, ensuring that the new measures decided by the head of the State were "not unconstitutional". Last Friday, during a visit to Grenoble, Nicolas Sarkozy had wished to extend the forfeiture of nationality, possible today in terrorism and interference with the fundamental interests of the nation, to those who have "deliberately infringed a person's life trustee of the public order". To achieve this, "simply return to the State of the law that prevailed prior to 1998, which allowed to punish those who have committed crimes punishable in five years in prison, all within a period of ten years after the acquisition of French nationality", assured Eric Besson, preparing an amendment to this effect to his Bill on immigrationdiscussed the end of September in the National Assembly.

"The principle of equality."

The conditions cover the field defined by the head of State, and the bulk of those evoked by Brice Hortefeux. The Minister of the Interior asked Sunday be depriving of their nationality the authors of excision, serious violence and trafficking of human beings, as crimes subject to at least five years in prison. On the other hand, the polygamists, that he has mentioned, could not be so punished.

Controversy, surely, is however not completed. Law specialists which emit a doubt on the constitutionality of the measure - Robert Badinter, Guy Carcassonne, Dominique Rousseau - recall that the Constitutional Council has continued, since 1998, to confirm the "principle of equality" between citizens (article 1 of the Constitution). If it agreed to open the measure to the terrorists in 1996, he has done "from the tip of the lips", and the exceptional nature of the measure. "Under the nationality law, persons who have acquired French nationality and those to which the French nationality has been attributed to their birth are in the same situation," insisted the Council.

In any case this is nurturing the political debate and expands the programme of action of the Government for the re-entry. If the debate on pensions looks delicate, with a strong mobilization of the street, the Government ponders action tracks which will avoid to see the spotlight media all in the same direction. As Minister of Education, Luc Chatel said yesterday to change school rhythms. He will leave late August to the Denmark to study their model. "We have 20 months of action before the end of the quinquennium, he insisted.