The far-right Front National has angered artists and craft workers in a southern French town with plans to make them earn their government-subsidised rent by performing community chores, including looking after primary school children for free, reports The Telegraph.
The anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic party, which now controls several large towns across the country after local elections, wants the arts workers in the Mediterranean port of Fréjus to care for the children in exchange for subsidised rent.
“Let me put it simply,” said David Rachline, Front National mayor. “The town largely finances the rents of a certain number of these ladies and gentlemen. They have to give something back.
“There will be no more debate. Either it goes well and everybody takes part, or else I put a stop to this situation where we pay everybody’s rent,” he announced at a recent meeting of the city council.
Mr Rachline wants the 15 artists concerned to take part in educational activities for kindergarten and primary school children for an hour and a half when they finish their classes at 4:30pm.
But the proposal has been met with outrage and incomprehension by the artists – among them leather workers, jewellery makers, painters, and graphic artists – who benefit from generous subsidies from the local authorities for their work spaces.
They pay just €2.50 per square metre a month to rent studios in the old part of the popular tourist town, which is well below the market rate for properties in the historic centre of the town that is situated next to the more upmarket resort of St Raphael.
“The city council wants to make us work for free, to look after children for nothing!” said Olivier Isselin, an art photographer who has a studio in Fréjus old town. “But the problem is that we are not trained to care for such small children. And how could we commit to such activities when we often have to be out of town for exhibitions or simply are too busy working?”