A report drawn up for the French government has rejected calls for "positive discrimination" to help minorities find jobs, dealing a blow to Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy.
Mr Sarkozy has challenged President Jacques Chirac by calling for affirmative action to help tackle high unemployment among minorities, seen as one of the causes of three weeks of rioting in poor suburbs that abated last week.
But the report, prepared by the High Council on integration, a panel of academics and cultural figures, backed Chirac's view that positive discrimination or setting quotas for hiring minorities has no place in a state built on the belief that everyone should have equal opportunities.
"The worst result of the current crisis ... would be to succumb to the temptation to do away with the Republican promise of equal rights and opportunity in place of positive discrimination and ethnic and communal policies," said the government-commissioned report, released today.
The study into integration policies over the last three years was delivered to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who also opposes affirmative action and is widely seen as Mr Sarkozy's main rival to lead the centre-right into the 2007 presidential election.
Mr Sarkozy has repeatedly signalled his determination to win backing for positive discrimination, and defended his position after the release of the report.
Despite backing the government's policies, the report said the cabinet had been slow to adopt some of the panel's earlier recommendations and that officials could do a better job of communicating policies that were already in place.
The High Council said it had told the government in 2003 it should start offering apprenticeships to 14-year-olds.
Children in France are supposed to stay in school at least until they are 16 but some of the people involved in the recent riots in poor suburbs were as young as 10, police said.