Guest of franceinfo, the LFI deputy also spoke about the Pope’s visit to Marseille. “It’s aberrant” that Emmanuel Macron is participating, believes Éric Coquerel.
France will no longer issue visas to non-scheduled artists from Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. “What is this business of blocking visas from all these countries? What world do we live in?” Éric Coquerel was outraged Thursday September 14 on franceinfo. While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls on cultural actors to no longer issue new invitations to artists from these three African countries, recently affected by coups d’état, the LFI deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis denounces a choice “scandalous and stupid”.
According to the MP, it is not necessary “make artists pay” the criticisms against France formulated in these three States. It doesn’t do “only make the problem worse”, supports the president of the finance committee of the National Assembly. “This is not the right way to improve the image of France in these countries, at a time when we can clearly see that there are criticisms, some of which are very largely justified.”
“I don’t understand how this decision was made,” wonders Éric Coquerel. “It’s incomprehensible, I ask that we go back, that we come back to reason,” continues the MP. “It’s more than a clumsiness: it’s an error which denotes a neo-colonialist vision, when we said that we had finished with ‘Françafrique’. But the measures we are taking are retaliatory measures against artists. For Éric Coquerel, “even when there are difficulties between countries, the last bridges that we must prioritize are those with artists, it’s absolutely amazing.”
Emmanuel Macron at the Pope’s mass in Marseille: “It’s aberrant”
Eric Coqurel also reacted to Pope Francis’ mass at the Vélodrome in Marseille on September 23, which Emmanuel Macron will attend. “It’s absurd,” believes the politician. Referring to the ban on wearing the abaya at school, Éric Coquerel believes that “on the one hand, we are being made a whole point about 304 young women who are dressed in a long dress in the name of secularism and on the other hand the head of state is doing what we should never do “.
For the chairman of the finance committee of the National Assembly, “with the separation of Church and State we do not start by going to masses. That does not mean that we do not have relationships with religions, but we do not attend masses .”