00:00Are French authorities removing the EU flag from public buildings in an act of defiance against Brussels?
00:10French citizens are tearing down the EU flag from town halls and schools to reclaim their country from Brussels.
00:17That's according to a viral post on X that has fueled a long-running anti-EU narrative depicting the bloc
00:22as tyrannical.
00:23The post shows a video next to a picture of European Commission President Ertler von der Leyen in which we
00:29see a man taking down an EU flag that had been flying alongside the French and Occitan flags.
00:35A reverse image search from the video takes us to the ex-account of Christophe Barthez, the newly elected mayor
00:40of Carcassonne and a member of the far-right National Rally Party, who posted the clip to his own profile
00:46on 29th March.
00:47So, the video is authentic and reflects Barthez's Eurosceptic views, but it's misleading to suggest that an anti-EU flag
00:55wave has swept through France.
00:57French response, an ex-account run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs tackling disinformation, responded to the viral post saying,
01:04one out of 34,874 municipalities is hardly France.
01:10The story has also prompted misleading claims about whether flying European flags from public buildings in France is legally required.
01:16Some social media users argue a 2019 law forces town halls in communes with more than 1,500 inhabitants to
01:24fly the French and European flags,
01:27as well as display France's national motto and a portrait of the president.
01:31However, there's currently no French law requiring town halls to display the European flag.
01:36A bill to do so was voted through by the National Assembly in 2023, but the Senate hasn't followed suit,
01:42leaving it stuck in Parliament.
01:43But there is a government directive that the EU flag must be flown on Europe Day on the 9th of
01:49May,
01:49and a law that says schools do have to fly it all the time.
01:53Générique
01:56Egaumin
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