France's town halls told to remove Palestinian flags flown to mark Macron's recognition

By Juliette Jabkhiro

NANTERRE, France (Reuters) -As French President Emmanuel Macron recognised Palestine statehood earlier this week, dozens of town halls across France hoisted the Palestinian flag in celebration - defying instructions by Macron's interior ministry not to do so.

By Wednesday, some had taken the flag down after regional authorities initiated legal proceedings - an episode which some mayors said undermined the message of solidarity Macron sought to make with his largely symbolic recognition.

"For me it's a complete misunderstanding," Raphael Adam, mayor of Nanterre outside Paris, told Reuters. "You can't have a government asking its representatives to oppose raising a flag at the same time it's recognising the state."

The city raised the flag in a ceremony on Monday but a day later, the Nanterre administrative court ruled it should be removed after the city defied an order by the regional representative, known as the prefect, to take it down.

Under French law, public buildings cannot be used as platforms for expressing political, religious or philosophical opinions. Local officials noted, however, that Ukrainian flags have been displayed and even projected on the Eiffel Tower.

"When we raised a Ukrainian flag, no one told us anything!" said Gilles Poux, mayor of La Courneuve, northeast of Paris, who planned to take down the flag late on Tuesday after his administration was fined for flying one earlier this year.

"Speaking of neutrality is hypocritical. Liberty, equality, fraternity: there's nothing neutral about these values," he said.

Asked about the allegations of double standards, the interior ministry told Reuters the Gaza war had provoked protests and tensions in France, and that displaying Palestinian flags on public buildings could trigger public unrest.

As of Tuesday night, 86 town halls across France had flown the Palestinian flag, according to the interior ministry, which last week told regional government representatives to block such moves for contravening France's "neutrality principle".

Anne Tuaillon, head of the France Palestine Solidarity Association, said there was no room for neutrality "in a situation of oppression", referring to Israel's military onslaught on Gaza since the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

Lionel Crusoe, a lawyer specialised in French public law, said the interior ministry ruling made little sense.

"This neutrality principle for public services does not prevent a municipality from being able to occasionally show solidarity towards a people who are the target of a military aggression, or a terrorist attack, for example," he said.

(Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro, additional reporting by Manuel Ausloos, Editing by Gabriel Stargardter and Philippa Fletcher)