A series of three separate legal cases against British individuals and organisations are making their way through French courts this summer.
Each has a different angle on a common theme – Brits showing other Brits around French ski slopes without professional qualifications that meet French requirements.
One case concerns tour operator staff showing new arrivals around the gentler slopes of French resorts in an orientation tour known as ski hosting. The French want anyone ski hosting to have high-level professional ski teaching qualifications.
A second case concerns a British man who has been ski teaching in France for over 30 years, appears highly regarded as an instructor, and has high international qualifications. He does not, however, hold the required French qualifications, and has refused to take them, saying the EC employment equality laws mean that he shouldn’t have to. That case is making its way on towards ever higher courts for hopefully, ultimately, an independent EC level decision.
Finally, the Ski Club of Great Britain is being taken to court over its long-standing ski guiding operation in France, again the issue being the precise status of the Club’s guides, and whether they do or do not need to hold acceptable qualifications for the French, as they are not paid wages as such.
It is open to debate whether the three legal cases are connected to the mood across Europe, which has seen the rise of nationalist parties in most European countries. It may be just coincidence that these issues, which have been known about for decades, have all suddenly reached French courts at the same time.
In the UK, however, parties like UKIP have been quick to label the cases as protectionism by the French, and on social media some people have been calling on Brits to boycott French ski resorts in protest.
Others say it is quite fair to make rules and enforce them, and the French Embassy in London felt the need to step in and point out that the rules were equally applicable to French, and other nationalities, as much as to the Brits.
We asked three French skiing experts whether they thought the court cases would have any impact on our long-term love affair with French skiing, still by far our most popular ski destination.
Olivier Lepoureau:
“We don’t believe this will have any impact whatsoever on the number of British skiers going to France,” says Olivier Lepoureau, boss of specialist French ski travel company Ski Collection (skicollection.co.uk). “France is by far the first ski destination in the world for British skiers, and none of this will change the fundamental reasons for this – big, high, snowsure ski areas that are easy to reach and offer ski-in, ski-out access along with excellent gastronomy, for example.”
“British skiers will continue to be welcome by all tourist professionals who are not involved in those court cases and who don’t even know about them! (Virtually no one in France has heard of these cases, unless they subscribe to British newspapers after a bit of Eurobashing to boost their popularity).”
Elizabeth Cahir:
“I can understand that there are laws there that need to be enforced and a country does have a right to enforce them. However, I think that the loss of guiding and the general perception in the UK that France is unwelcoming could persuade people to try other countries,” says Elizabeth Cahir, whose family have been running the Mégève ski holiday specialist company Stanford skiing (www.stanfordskiing.co.uk) for many years.
“I don’t think that France is unwelcoming, especially not in Mégève where people tend to be very friendly, but it’s all about perception, and high-profile court cases don’t help. Perhaps a solution might be for the French authorities to produce a lower-grade ski group leading qualification that is not teaching, but gives some guidance on how to lead small groups skiing safely?”
Richard Sinclair:
“On hosting, yes, the French are acting in a protectionist manner in some cases, but they’ve been given an excuse to do so by a small minority of Brit hosts who have pushed the boundaries too far, allowing the outer limits of hosting to be ‘close enough to argue’ they exhibit elements of coaching or off-piste guiding,” said Richard Sinclair of online travel agency SNO.co.uk.
“At SNO we’ve had several customers (mostly larger groups) ask us to find them something outside of their regular French haunts next winter, so I do think the legal wranglings will have a negative impact on the number of us skiing in France next winter, but not a big one.”
