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CONSTITUTIONAL COURT SAYS CORRIDA IS NOT OUTSIDE FRENCH LAW IN AREAS WITH LONG TRADITION BULL-fighting has been ruled to be legal under the French constitution, the Conseil Constitutionnel

said today. High-profile campaigners including Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo had called for the corrida to be banned as cruel. They said animal protection laws should

apply equally throughout France and not be waived in "areas with a tradition of bull-fighting". The judges said that such "differences in treatment" for bull-fighting

regions such as the south and south-west were not outside the constitution, which gave "precise, objective and rational" criteria of "uninterrupted local tradition". They

added that this also allowed cock-fighting in the Antilles. The Conseil Constitutionnel was asked for a prelimary ruling after anti-corrida groups Droits Des Animaux and Comité Radicalement

Anti-Corrida (Crac) had lodged a complaint calling for the corrida to be taken off France's heritage list, a position awarded by former culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand. This week

Interior Minister Manuel Valls - who was born in Spain and moved to France as a child - made a passionate call for the corrida to be allowed. He told BFMTV news that it was vital to

maintain traditions in an economic crisis: "It's a culture that we have to preserve. We need these roots, we should not tear them out." He was speaking after last

weekend's bull-fighting festival in Nîmes, Gard, when Spanish star matador José Tomás fought six bulls, killing five and pardonning one for its brave fight. France has other styles of

bull-fighting that do not involve killing, with the _course libre_ or _camarguaise_ in Languedoc where _reseteurs_ try to grab a rosette from the bull's head. In _course landaise_ teams

dodge the cow so a _sauteur_ can jump over it. Photo: MarcusObal