Bernard-Henri Lévy criticises Sarkozy's plan to withdraw citizenship

Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy reacts with indignation in the daily Le Monde to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to have naturalised French citizens stripped of their French citizenship if they put a policeman's life in danger: "I won't say anything about the grotesque character of the term 'of foreign origin', because where does the foreign origin begin? How many generations does it take ... to make you safe from potential withdrawal of citizenship? Does the president have a criterion in mind here? A test? Perhaps even a DNA test? And even if such tests existed ..., what would happen to those whose citizenship was withdrawn? Into what kind of legal loophole would they fall? Because generally like most people they won't have a substitute nationality. Former French? Stateless persons? Will we now start generating stateless persons under the pretext put forward by Sarkozy that the nationalisation machine 'no longer works'? It's simply unbelievable that one could vaguely imply that there are two classes of French citizens: those who were born French and those who became French."

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