Outgoing European lawmaker Boumediene has been a strong pro-Palestinian advocate and tabled a draft resolution to boycott Israel

By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent

PARIS , June 12 (IslamOnline.net) – Several Muslim and Arab citizens will be vying Sunday, June 13, for seats in the powerful European Parliament on the lists of different parties.

The integration of Arab and Muslim immigrants has become a key electoral card for different political parities, which attests to multi-ethnic France, Dominique Reny, a French political science professor, told IslamOnline.net.

He said that though French Arabs and Muslims are present in almost all parties, bar the anti-immigrants extremist parties, they figure prominently in left-leaning parties.

This, he remarked, is largely because such parties have a pro-immigrants platforms.

Outgoing European parliamentarian Alima Boumediene is co-leading the Greens’ 28-strong slate in the new elections.

Representing the Communist Party in the 1999 elections, 47-year-old Boumediene has been a strong pro-Palestinian advocate and tabled a draft resolution to boycott Israel .

Kader Arif is leading the opposition left-wing Socialists Party (PS) in the southwest with a logo of "For Socialist Europe".

Ouarda Karrai and Souhila Nador are two other Arab and Muslim ladies, who stand in the elections on the Socialists’ slate in Paris .

French President Jacques Chirac’s ruling centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party suffered last March a stunning defeat at the local polls, losing control of nearly all the country's regional assemblies to the PS.

Hamida Ben Sadia is figuring high at the Communist Party's slate, which also includes a number of other Muslim and Arab immigrants.

In the last regional elections, the party nominated the secretary general of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples (MRAP ), Mouloud Aounit, who garnered 50,000 votes at polls in Saint Denis, northern Paris .

France’s streets are awash with election stickers

The Muslim and Arab candidates, on the other hand, are hardly represented in the right-wing parties with only one Arab candidate registered on the slate of the governing UMP in Paris .

Former interior minister Charle Pasquoi has formed his own independent slate with two Arab faces, Mouloud Talbi and Mohamed Rahal, who come 9th and 17th respectively on the list.

Other self-styled slates include the French Union for National Cohesion (UFCN), which is led by hijab-donned Faouzia Zebdi Ghorab and features 20 other candidates of Arab and Islamic origins as well as the Euro Palestine, which includes 10 Arabs and Muslims.

France , which has an estimated 6 million Arab and Muslim community, has a share of 78 seats in the 732-strong European legislature.

The first direct elections to the European Parliament were held in June 1979. The Members of Parliament are elected every five years.

The parliament has acquired greater influence and power through a series of treaties, chiefly the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty.

These treaties have transformed the parliament from a purely consultative assembly into a legislative parliament, which now passes the majority of European laws.