Moroccans and French-Moroccans discriminated against at the French Chamber of Commerce

The French Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CFCIM) in Morocco is at the heart of a workplace discrimination scandal. The body considered as France’s biggest commerce chamber abroad makes use of a discriminatory article when dealing with its Moroccan and French-Moroccan members, sources told Yabiladi.

According to CFCIM’s statutes, which Yabiladi had the chance to take a look at, only the French members can be elected to join the chamber’s board of directors.

Discrimination inside CFCIM ?

To put it in other words, a Moroccan citizen can easily be a member of the French chamber but cannot be part of the body’s board of directors. The above-mentioned article excludes even French-Moroccans, as according to it they are still considered Moroccans by the country’s law.

But this particular situation is encountered only in Morocco. For instance, Domingo San Felipe, the former president of the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Spain, is Spanish. In Tunisia, the French association is chaired by Foued Lakhoua and in Egypt, the board of directors is mainly composed of Egyptian nationals, while CCFE is co-chaired by Mahmoud El Kaissy and Hervé Majidier.

But even though the association installed in Casablanca has a majority of Moroccan members (more than 80% of its members are Moroccans), CFCIM has an article that justifies its discriminatory practices.

In fact, the association’s statute was amended in 2007, but the Article in question never changed.

The departure of Jamal Belahrach

But meanwhile, article 12 has penalized and continues to penalize several Moroccan and French Moroccan members of CFCIM. Some of them have even left, as a way of protesting against the harsh regulation.

Jamal Belahrach, the former managing director of Morocco’s Manpower subsidiary, was once part of the French association. Holding the French and Moroccan citizenships, he was a member of CFCIM’s board of directors in the 2000s. He served as the head of the Human Resources Committee in the French Chamber.

«The chamber appoints people, who can be Moroccan or French-Moroccan, based on their savoir-faire and qualities», he explained. When Jamal Belahrach wanted to run for the election to be a «more operational member» within the CFCIM’s board of directors, his candidacy was refused.

«They told me that I was not French to be elected», he told Yabiladi. «I never understood that kind of discrimination. I am French and Moroccan everywhere I go but not in CFCIM, which does not recognize the fact that I hold two citizenships».

For him, CFCIM had «used» its statutes to explain the situation «with the objective of never having a Moroccan or French-Moroccan national heading its board of directors». «It’s incoherent and it discriminates against binational members. I know that it is the only French chamber that does this in the world, which makes me question its achievements», argued the businessman.

People who hold two citizenships were not the only ones to comment on the «discriminatory» article. A former French member of the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Morocco told Yabiladi that he doesn’t know how «to explain the situation» at beginning before realizing that «it was very discriminatory».

For the same source, «you really have to make some change at the CFCIM because in five years this will continue happening». «Although it serves the interests of France, the minimum it can do is to respect the host country», concluded the same source.

But for the moment, this seems so far from being done in the blink of an eye. According to Yabiladi’s sources, since the election of the association’s new president in 2016, only two committees are still chaired by Moroccans. The rest is headed by French nationals only.