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French MPs vote to scrap special identity papers for travelling people

The lower house of France’s parliament voted late Monday in favour of cancelling special travel permits that worked as identity cards for nomadic people known as gens de voyage (travellers). While travellers' and rights groups hail the bill as a measure against discrimination, critics say it will not resolve France’s strained relations between nomadic and sedentary people.  

A family of travellers at Cap d'Agde, France, 9 June 2015.
A family of travellers at Cap d'Agde, France, 9 June 2015. AFP/Anne-Christine Poujoulat
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The proposal affects some 350,000 French citizens who fall into a legal category of travellers, which is used to refer to a number of ethnic groups including Manouches, Gitans and Roma – who are themselves not to be confused with Roma originating from outside the country.

France’s travellers tend to live in mobile homes and stay at special campsites managed by town councils, looking for work wherever they may be.

Since 1969 they have carried the livret de circulation, a permit that functioned as a sort of internal passport and granted access to camps and was used to access other social services.

However, travellers described difficulties in using the permits to access civil services, even though they theoratically have full legal rights as citizens.

“A few years ago, I wanted to apply for unemployment benefits and I was asked for an identity card,” says Françoise Gaspard, a traveller who like most others obtained her permit when she turned 16.

“I showed my permit, and was told it was not an identity card. I realised the permit showed I had an identity but did not represent it.”

Gaspard also cites difficulties in acquiring a correctly processed national identity card, even though she is a French citizen.

It was challenges like these that led rights groups and even the United Nations to pressurise the French authorities to repeal the permits on the grounds they were discriminatory.

“[Travellers] had to show these cards when they were going to get credit from banks, to get a place where they could settle, to put their children in schools, to vote and all that legal stuff that did not exist for the other French people,” says Louis de Gouyon Matignon, a French politician who has been working with the travellers for six years.

He describes “a big discrimination between the French people that have a normal house and the nomadic people”.

If rights groups are hoping the proposed law will take away a layer of discrimination when it comes to travellers participating in French society, it still has to pass through the opposition-controlled Senate, where it can be expected to face a thorough grilling by critics.

The right-wing opposition partyLes Républicains, previously the UMP, says it is not opposed to cancelling the permits, but criticises proposals to change legislation for the reception areas reserved for travellers around the country.

The party argues the proposals would place a greater burden on local councils in terms of costs and maintaining the sites, which it says are often left in poor conditions after travellers’ departure and have to be cleaned at the municipalities’ expense.

“There are no significant measures to combat the behaviour of certain categories of travellers,” says RépublicainsMP Annie Genevard, who led the parliamentary debate against the bill.

“Not all of them behave poorly of course but some do create real problems that negatively affect the populations around them. At a time that mayors are facing real budget shortages, this law will create new expenses and won’t help resolve the problem of property damage, which is getting harder and harder to manage.”

Even if the bill is voted down in the Senate, it will still likely pass, since the lower house gets the final say.

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