French Minister of Solidarity and Households Aurore Berge arrives to attend the weekly cupboard assembly on the Elysee Palace in Paris. (AP Photograph/Michel Euler, file)
PARIS — A French minister on Sunday accused US diplomats of interfering within the operations of French firms by sending them a letter reportedly telling them that US President Donald Trump’s rollback of range, fairness and inclusion initiatives might additionally apply exterior of the USA.
French media mentioned that the letter obtained by main French firms was signed by an officer of the US State Division who’s on the workers on the US Embassy in Paris. The embassy didn’t reply to questions this weekend from The Related Press.
READ: Which US firms are pulling again on range initiatives?
Le Figaro day by day newspaper printed what it mentioned was a duplicate of the letter.
The doc mentioned that an government order that Trump signed in January terminating DEI packages throughout the federal authorities additionally “applies to all suppliers and repair suppliers of the US Authorities, no matter their nationality and the nation during which they function.”
The doc requested recipients to finish, signal and return inside 5 days a separate certification type to display that they’re in compliance.
That type, additionally printed by Le Figaro, mentioned: “All Division of State contractors should certify that they don’t function any packages selling DEI that violate any relevant anti-discrimination legal guidelines.”
The shape requested recipients to tick a field to substantiate that they “don’t function any packages selling Variety, Fairness, and Inclusion that violate any relevant Federal anti-discrimination legal guidelines.”
The letter added: “If you don’t comply with signal this doc, we’d respect it when you might present detailed causes, which we’ll ahead to our authorized companies.”
Aurore Bergé, France’s minister for equality between men and women and combating discrimination, mentioned Sunday that the letter is “a type, clearly, of interference. That’s to say it’s an try to impose a diktat on our companies.”
Chatting with broadcaster BFMTV, she mentioned that France’s authorities is “following the state of affairs very intently” and dealing to find out what number of firms obtained the letter.
The minister mentioned that “many” firms have informed the federal government that they don’t plan to answer, “as a result of they don’t have a reply, in reality, to a kind of ultimatum laid out by the U.S. Embassy in our nation.”
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“It’s out of the query that we’ll forestall our enterprise from selling social progress,” the minister mentioned. “Fortunately, a variety of French firms don’t plan to vary their guidelines.”
