Yazid Sabeg

Éric Besson, Patrick Lozès, Chloé Mortaud (Miss France 2009) and Yazid Sabeg at the annual diner of CRAN, February 5, 2009

Yazid Sabeg (born 8 January 1950 in Guelma, Algeria), is the president of the administrative council of the French high-technology firm CS Communication and Systems and also a member of the French Institute of International and Strategic Relations.

Origins and education

Born to a docker father, he moved to what was then metropolitan France in 1952, did his studies at Faidherbe Secondary School in Lille and then at the University of Paris I where he obtained a PhD in economic and social sciences.

Career

He began his career at a subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais Bank. In 1990, after an experience in Spie Batignolles, he founded a financial firm thanks to which he took control of the Compagnie des Signaux, known as CS Communication et Systèmes.

His success in the business world, coupled with his Maghrebian origins, have given him a lot of media coverage. Member of the Montaigne Institute, he is close to the UMP.^[1] In 2004, he published Discrimination positive, pourquoi la France ne peut y échapper (Positive discrimination, why France cannot escape from it) with his brother Yacine, a journalist.^[2][3]

Work for diversity and equality

He has been nominated as the "commissaire à l'égalité des chances" in François Fillon government by French president Nicolas Sarkozy on December 17, 2008.^[4]

Sabeg warned that France risked becoming an apartheid state unless it brings minorities into the mainstream. "Today we are creating a rift that is leading straight to apartheid", said Sabeg when named commissioner for diversity and equal opportunities. "We cannot allow France to become an apartheid state", he said in an interview to several French media as Barack Obama, the first black American to serve as US president, began his first full day in office.^[5]

References

1. No place for French Muslims on party list, Jon Henley, The Guardian, February 13, 2004.
2. Discrimination positive: Pourquoi la France ne peut y échapper, Equall.fr.
3. Discrimination positive: Pourquoi la France ne peut y échapper on Google Books.
4. French plan to break taboo on ethnic data causes uproar, Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian, March 23, 2009.
5. French czar warns of "apartheid", peoplestar.co.uk, Retrieved on 2009-01-21.

External links

• "France's disaffected Muslim businessmen," BBC News, 4 November 2005
• "Liberte, Egalite, Affirmative Action," Business Week, 31 January 2005
• "L'intégration est-elle en panne?",Le Monde, 29 November 2005 (French)