The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, proposed to the Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, to put an end to a discriminatory system in hiring excluding HIV-positive people from the gendarmerie and the military corps of firefighters, a-t -we learned, Thursday, May 4, from the Ministry of the Interior.
“The medical criteria for aptitude for integration into the national gendarmerie or the military corps of firefighters [in Paris and Marseille] do not currently allow HIV-positive people to access these professions,” wrote Tuesday the Minister of the Interior in a letter to Mr. Lecornu, revealed by the magazine Têtu and consulted by Agence France-Presse. “This state of affairs linked to the military status and the constraints it imposes seems to have to evolve,” adds Mr. Darmanin.
The Minister says he hopes that the Ministry of the Armed Forces will launch “very quickly (…) the work that will make it possible to carry out these recruitments in the very short term”, asking the Minister for the Armed Forces for a “rapid return”.
Discrimination already lifted for police officers
At the end of November 2022, this hiring discrimination targeting people living with HIV, the virus responsible for AIDS, had already been lifted for the police. The government had repealed by decree the application of Sigycop, a device for evaluating physical fitness used in several public service professions. Applied strictly, this assessment, based on a score from 1 to 6, classified HIV-positive people as unfit. Until now, the Ministry of the Armed Forces, whose health service governs the recruitment of gendarmes and military firefighters, had always refused to modify the Sigycop.
During a hearing in early 2023 before the Council of State, in the context of an appeal filed at the end of 2020 by seven LGBT organizations, the magistrates “lead to imply by their questions that there was indeed discrimination”, according to their lawyer, Etienne Deshoulières. “Ministry officials felt it, I think,” he adds.
The decision of the Minister of Armies could fall before that of the Council of State, which should not intervene before the summer, according to Mr. Deshoulières. The latest scientific studies have shown that HIV-positive people receiving antiretroviral treatment have an undetectable viral load and do not transmit HIV.