In what is being reported in UK news media as an escalation of the campaign by the French authorities against British people working in French ski resorts, a British ski instructor working in the resort of Megeve was arrested and held in local police cells overnight while teaching on the slopes.
Simon Butler, who revealed he himself had been led from the slopes in handcuffs by French police earlier in the ski season and faces a three month jail sentence, told BBC news that the arrest and imprisonment for 24 hours of his instructor Alex Casey was “absolutely unbelievable” and a case of “pure persecution” by French authorities.
“If this kind of thing happened to French workers in Britain there would be an absolute outcry. It’s scandalous,” Mr Butler told the Daily Telegraph.
The incident led to British tourists staging an impromptu demonstration in front of the police station and for the British MP for Mr Casey’s constituency to call from UK government intervention to get to the bottom of the issue. The numbers involved were variously estimated at “dozens” or “around 100” by different British media outlets.
Both Mr Casey and Mr Butler are reported to be facing 3 – 12 month jail spells for ski teaching or employing ski teachers without accepted qualifications in France. Court cases are due later this spring.
The ski teacher’s arrest follows a court case against British tour operator Le Ski earlier this year in which the company was charged with illegally employing a staff member to lead a familiarisation tour of the slopes.
However a Chamonix police spokesperson, responsible for the region including Megeve, has stressed there is no campaign against British ski teachers and told the BBC the police was merely enforcing the law.
The law concerned appears to relate to a 2003 pan-European agreement that ski instructors have passed a high ‘Eurotest’ standard in order to be able to teach. Some reports say that instructors are required to have the ‘Eurotest’ qualification to work for a non Ecole du ski Francais (ESF) ski school in France, although it may not be needed to teach in France if employed by the ESF. Mr Butler also told the Daily Telegraph that in order to operate within French law a non-ESF ski school had to have at least 10 instructors with the ‘Eurotest’ qualification, his school has nine.
It is not clear if there have been any previous prosecutions in France over the 10 years since the Eurotest agreement or if any other countries have imprisoned instructors lacking the qualification for teaching on their slopes.
In the separate ski guiding case, Le Ski is now being backed by around a dozen leading British ski tour operators in its ongoing legal battle to allow ski guiding in its limited form (familiarisation tours of easy-moderate category slopes, no teaching involved) to continue.
In each case the British companies involved had been working in France with no reported previous problems for at least 30 years. Mr Casey, aged 40, had worked as a ski instructor in Megeve for more than 10 years according to reports, and is reported to have BASI (the British Association of Snowsports Instructors) teaching qualifications.
However a spokesperson for BASI (the British Association of Snowsports Instructors) quoted by the BBC appeared to support the French police action, saying, “This is European law and you would expect the French police and the local magistrates to apply the laws as they understand them.”
In the case of the ski guiding legal case, French ski schools say they allow qualified ski teachers from other countries to teach or guide on their slopes. However ski instructors with qualifications below BASI level 3 or the kind of ‘gap year’ ski teaching qualifications commonly available in countries like Canada and New Zealand are reported not to be acceptable to French ski schools even for basic familiarisation tours of resorts.
Another alleged incident, reported by the Daily Mail, involved an 18-year-old female student who was allegedly, “pushed over violently” and “was screaming and crying with pain when a gendarme leapt on her twisting her arm back,” after she took photographs of police questioning a ski instructor over alleged illegal ski teaching.
Comments pages following British media stories on the incidents have included calls for boycotts of French ski resorts. France is the leading destination nation for British skiers and snowboarders with around 40% market share.
A plan for a promotional ‘flash mob’ performance by members to the ESF who have been vocally supportive of the actions of the French police, although keen to stress through a British PR agency that they do not profit from it (a claim disputed by British tour operators), in London earlier this season, was cancelled at short notice.
