Macron vows to stop foreign imams from entering France in a bid to counter 'separatism'

Macron, during a visit to the city of Mulhouse in eastern France, said the government wants to combat "foreign interference" in how Islam is practiced and the way its religious institutions are organised in the secular country.

"The problem is when in the name of a religion, some want to separate themselves from the Republic and therefore not respect its laws," he said.

Macron said he plans to end a program created in 1977 that allowed nine countries to send teachers to France to provide foreign language and culture classes without any supervision from French authorities.

Four majority-Muslim countries - Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey - were involved in the program, which reaches about 80,000 students every year.

As part of the program, around 300 imams are sent to France every year by these countries. Macron announced that those who arrived in 2020 would be the last before reforms are put in place.

France will instead have bilateral agreements with other nations to ensure the French state has control over the courses and their content starting in September, the French leader said, adding that a new law is being drafted to provide transparency in how mosques are financed.

Read more: How French 'secularism' became a front for Islamophobia

Macron said he asked the French Muslim Council, the CFCM, to improve the training of imams in France. He said the practice of allowing Algeria, Morocco and Turkey to send imams to France would be phased out.

"Mosques financed with transparency with imams trained in France and respectful of the Republican values and principles, that's how we will create the conditions so that Muslims in France can practice freely their religion," Macron said.

The only country with which France didn't reach an agreement on the new measures was Turkey.

"Turkey today can make the choice to follow that path with us or not, but I won't let any foreign country feed a cultural, religious or identity-related separatism on our Republic's ground," he said.

"We cannot have Turkey's laws on France's ground. No way," Macron added.