Part IV - The reform agenda for recovered sovereignty
10 - Laïcité
Sovereign France adopts a militant laïcité: not a laïcité of passive separation, but a laïcité that actively protects the public space from any ostensible religious expression. This position is universal; it applies to all religions without exception and without distinction. It is precisely this universality that makes it legally and politically defensible.
The general rule in public space
In public space, only the discreet religious piece of jewelry is tolerated. Any garment or accessory with an ostensible religious function is prohibited without exception - cassock, Islamic veil, kippah, Sikh turban, cassock, and equivalents. Religious processions and demonstrations in public space are prohibited, with one exception detailed below.
Civil servants in the exercise of their functions are subject to an even stricter rule: zero religious signs, including jewelry. Neutrality is absolute in the exercise of the function. Foreign tourists are subject to the same rule as residents: one conforms to the society one visits, without exception for origin or nationality. The only spaces where religious expression is free are places of worship and private homes.
Sanctions are graduated according to the nature of the object - light fine for an out-of-norm piece of jewelry, medium fine for a religious garment, heavy fine for a full-covering garment of the burqa or niqab type. The object is seized immediately and returned at the police station or gendarmerie. Recidivism entails an automatic surcharge.
Tolerance for historically documented traditional manifestations
Tolerance is granted to traditional manifestations (processions, cortèges, ritual gatherings) whose continuity on a precise territory is documented over at least one hundred years. This tolerance is not confessional: it is patrimonial and historical. It does not create a hierarchy between religions, it recognizes that certain collective practices predate laïcité itself and form part of the cultural fabric of the territory that hosts them.
This tolerance is strictly conservatory: it protects what exists and is documented, it cannot be extended to new practices. A prefectural register is established on the basis of historical archives. Only manifestations whose continuity is attested over at least one hundred years appear in it. No addition is possible except on the basis of new historical evidence. The rule applies to all traditions without confessional distinction: what is registered in it is so for its antiquity, not for its religion.
The financing of religious worship
Historically listed religious heritage benefits from public funding as national heritage: maintenance ensured by the EPNP or local authorities according to the classification. This is not a financing of worship, it is a financing of the nation's heritage.
Active places of worship are financed by their faithful only: no direct or indirect public subsidy, no tax exemption specific to worship. Foreign financing is totally prohibited - Gulf states on mosques, American organizations on evangelical temples, the Vatican on Catholic structures. Any proven foreign financing entails the closure of the place of worship, criminal prosecution of those responsible, and expulsion of foreign financiers as natural persons.
Two humanist exceptions are maintained. Public holidays of religious origin are preserved in the national calendar: their religious content has disappeared in the social practice of the great majority of French people, they now belong to the collective rhythm of the nation, secularized by usage. Chaplaincies in hospitals, prisons, and the military are maintained and financed by the State: the wounded, the detained, and the soldiers are in situations of extreme vulnerability for which spiritual support is a real human need that the State assumes without contradiction with its principles.
Education
Public education is secular, free, and universal. It aims to absorb the entirety of national schooling needs over time: its progressive reconstruction is a budgetary priority.
Private contracted education currently benefits from substantial public funding that constitutes an anomaly in an assumed militant laïcité. This funding ends progressively, territory by territory, as the public sector demonstrates its capacity to absorb the relevant student numbers. During the transition, the conditions of the contract are strengthened: absolute neutrality of teachers, no religious signs in the institution, strict application of national curricula. The contract is no longer a rent: it is a public service delegation accompanied by real and monitored obligations.
Private non-contracted education is entirely free in its religious functioning: it is financed by families and the faithful without any public subsidy. This freedom has a non-negotiable counterpart: compliance with a compulsory common core covering - French, mathematics, history, sciences, and national civic education. These future citizens must master the fundamentals that will allow them to think for themselves, whatever the religious orientation of their institution. Oversight of this common core is exercised by departmental academic directorates under the authority of the prefect, exactly according to the same procedures as for public education. An identified problem gives rise to a follow-up inspection, then to progressive financial sanctions, then to the closure of the institution in the event of recidivism. Institution heads who deliberately circumvent the common core are personally prosecuted.
Catechism and its equivalents in other religious traditions are free: outside school hours, outside public premises, financed by the communities concerned without any State subsidy.