Question 13224 — unions

Summary

Ms. Marie Mesmeur alerts the Minister of National Education to the worrying attacks on trade union freedoms within local French public educational establishments. On February 9, 2026, a teacher from a high school in Landerneau was summoned by the Rennes rectorate for having displayed a Palestinian flag on his locker located in the teachers' room, without any political mention, and shared on the union expression board a brochure from the Médecin sans frontières association on the health situation in Gaza. This decision has caused serious concern. First, the staff representative organizations denounce an arbitrary restriction of their union freedoms. Indeed, the possibility for union representatives, of which the teacher in question is a member, to freely publish their communications on the union notice board makes part of the exercise of the right to organize guaranteed by law. This sign, which is not visible to users, is precisely intended to reconcile the duty of confidentiality and the freedoms of union and expression of civil servants. Secondly, the ban on affixing a flag, devoid of any other mention, on a personal locker and moreover out of the sight of users, leads the Member to question the precedent that such a decision is likely to create. Indeed, if the display of any foreign flag within educational establishments were henceforth to be prohibited, the prospect of removing all flags present in French educational establishments appears difficult to support, particularly in view of their widespread presence in rooms dedicated to the teaching of modern languages. If, on the other hand, the ban were to target specifically certain countries and in this case Palestine, a state recognized by France since September 22, 2025, the MP would like to know the criteria for determining that a country would be deemed more acceptable than another. She asks him if a possible list of states whose symbols would be banned in educational establishments will be established by the ministry - for example Russia, North Korea, Israel, which are countries whose actions are divisive today. The MP asks the Minister if the arbitrariness and absurdity of this situation could not bring everyone to their senses. Finally, the MP underlines the disproportion between the alleged facts and the sanction suffered by the Landerneau union representative. A summons to the human resources department at the rectorate headquarters, more than 200 km away of the place of residence and work of the principal concerned, appears disproportionate. It could have been dealt with directly by the teaching staff division or even simply resolved internally within the establishment. She therefore asks him to clarify the ins and outs of this procedure and to reaffirm that freedom of association constitutes a right guaranteed to teachers and remains a democratic pillar of the Republic.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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