French government sets up laicite office to better protect secularism RFI 16 Jul 2021, 04:16 GMT+10 The French government has created an office of laicite in an effort to better control how state secularism - one of the fundamental values of the French Republic - is taught and transmitted. The Interministerial Committee replaces the Observatoire de la Laicite, which was criticised for not cracking down hard enough on radical Islam. "There have been many theoretical debates and controversies for many years. Now it is time to act," Marlène Schiappa, France's junior minister in charge of citizenship, told French public radio on Thursday.