After cases involving far-right leader Marine Le Pen and ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, now it is Gaël Perdriau, the mayor of Saint-Étienne, who has been handed a prison sentence and an immediate ban from holding office. This represents another victory for journalism, write Mediapart co-editor Lénaïg Bredoux and joint head of investigations Michaël Hajdenberg in this op-ed article. They argue that it also provides fresh hope for all those who believe that strong checks and counter-balances are needed against the rise of the far-right and its media backers.
The mayor of Saint-Étienne in south-east France was on Monday given a five-year jail term, one year of which is suspended, along with an immediate five-year ban from holding public office. This follows his conviction in the so-called sex-tape blackmail case involving a plot against his own deputy mayor. Gaël Perdriau will soon be behind bars, as will the three other men involved in the affair.
National conscription was abolished in France in 1997. But President Emmanuel Macron has just announced that a “purely military” - and voluntary - national service will be introduced for young adults next summer. As Mediapart's political correspondent writes, France's head of state has found the guiding principle for the rest of his presidency: that of preparing the country for war. At the Élysée, his aides hope this strategy will encourage the public to pay attention to him on the domestic front once again.
The film co-produced by Mediapart, now available through VOD.
France's Ministry of Higher Education has commissioned a survey to assess the attitude of university staff to anti-Semitism. Some trade unionists have attacked the move as a political “census”. According to Mediapart's information, university presidents have now told the ministry that they will not pass on the questionnaire to employees.
On November 26th France's top appeal court, the Cour de Cassation, rejected the former president's appeal against his conviction over the illegal financing of his unsuccessful 2012 re-election campaign. This follows an earlier conviction for corruption and influence peddling in the case known as the 'Bismuth' phonetap affair. Nicolas Sarkozy has therefore been definitively convicted in two separate cases. Earlier this year he was also convicted at first instance in the Libyan election funding scandal but has appealed against that verdict.
The Mediterranean port city of Marseille faces a serious housing crisis, with demand for rented accommodation largely outstripping supply, and unmaintained buildings falling into dilapidation. Heightening the problem is a boom over recent years in short-term tourism rentals via Airbnb and other platforms, a lucrative business which has attracted unscrupulous landlords who buy up buildings of family apartments and chop them up into studios, bypassing basic health and safety regulations. The scourge prompted the city authorities to take legal action over the trend for the first time, and four landlords were tried earlier this week, when Lucie Delaporte was in court to follow the proceedings.
The Garden and the Jungle How the West Sees the World
Edwy Plenel’s far-ranging critique of Europe’s betrayal of universal values and equal rights as war and right-wing populism spread worldwide.
Mediapart in May began publishing a series of reports sent to it from inside the Gaza Strip by two young Palestinians, Nour Elassy and Ibrahim Badra, who chronicled the everyday events of life and death, displacement and hunger in the Strip. Both found refuge in France in July, from where they continue their chronicles for Mediapart. In this latest contribution, Ibrahim Badra denounces the absurdity of what is called a ceasefire, officially in place since October 10th, under which Palestinian civilians continue to be killed by Israeli forces. “Warplanes fly overhead and shells continue to rain down, leaving Gazans trapped between death and despair,” he writes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that his country faced "one of the most difficult moments in our history" after US President Donald Trump announced that Kyiv has until next Thursday to accept or reject a peace plan mapped out in secret between US and Russian officials. Leaks of the 28-point draft plan reveal it includes handing over to Russia areas of the Donbass region still under Ukrainian control, and a reduction of Ukraine’s armed forces. There has been broad angry reaction in Ukraine to the US ultimatum, piling more pressure on Zelensky, as detailed in this report from Mediapart’s Ukrainian media partner, The Kyiv Independent.
In Brazil, the Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining (MAM) is active in opposing what it regards as the unbridled exploitation of indigenous populations and their land by private mining companies, whose polluting activities are further fuelled by the market demands of energy transition. At the UN COP30 climate talks in the Brazilian city of Belém, centred on the issue of energy transition, Mediapart met with MAM activist Jeremias Santos, who in this interview denounces the harm extractivism is causing to human health and the environment in his country, in a process which is "driving new forms of colonialism".
A shipment of reprocessed uranium from French nuclear power plants has left the Channel port of Dunkirk to be enriched at a specialised Russian industrial plant run by the country’s nuclear energy group Rosatom, before being in part returned to France for further use in civil reactors. The shipment, loaded at the weekend on a Russian-operated, Panama-registered cargo vessel, was described by Greenpeace as a "cargo of shame", and “immoral”, while both French utility giant EDF, which operates the country’s nuclear power plants, and the French economy ministry, declined to comment.
