FRANCE:Whatever the result of this month's parliamentary elections in France, the Assemblée Nationale will remain one of the whitest legislative bodies in Europe, a black rights body said yesterday.
The Representative Council of Black Associations (Cran) presented a study showing that only 19 of 3,777 candidates standing for the main parties are black, well below the proportion of black people in the French population. The current parliament contains not a single black deputy from mainland France.
"There are big universalist speeches but they hide a reality that is a lot less glorious," Cran spokesman Louis-Georges Tin said.
Figures on the ethnic make-up of French society and institutions are often difficult to obtain, but some 3.86 per cent of adults questioned in a recent survey said they considered themselves black, equivalent to about 1,865,000 people.
Mr Tin said that despite rhetoric from across the political spectrum, his group struggled to produce the figures in the face of grudging support from most of the main parties.
The association says that none of the main parties has done enough to bring in more black candidates. - (Reuters)