Journaliste et responsable du pôle politique de Mediapart.
En charge de l’animation de la couverture éditoriale sur les extrêmes droites. Pour nous écrire : extremedroite@mediapart.fr
Declaration of interest
In the interest of transparency towards its readers, Mediapart’s journalists fill out and make public since 2018 a declaration of interests on the model of the one filled out by members of parliament and senior civil servants with the High Authority for Transparency and Public Life (HATVP), a body created in 2014 after Mediapart’s revelations on the Cahuzac affair.
The French government's public utterances during the coronavirus crisis have cruelly exposed its shortcomings, its method of thinking and the extent to which it is out of touch with events on the ground. There have been contradictory instructions, a slowness to express gratitude to those tackling the crisis on the front line, and great emphasis on the country being “at war”. Inside the government, writes Mediapart political journalist Ellen Salvi, some are worried about the image the executive is giving of itself during the crisis.
On Saturday February 29th, during an emergency meeting of ministers called to discuss the Coronavirus crisis, the French government took the decision to force its bitterly-opposed pension reforms through Parliament without a vote. In adopting the “nuclear option” of invoking Article 49-3 of the French Constitution to do this, President Emmanuel Macron is hoping that public debate will now shift to other issues. But as Ellen Salvi writes, the move is likely to plunge the remaining two years of his presidency into greater political uncertainty and even undermine his chances of re-election in 2022.
Benjamin Griveaux, 42, the candidate for mayor of Paris chosen by President Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party, stood down from the race on Friday after the online publication by a controversial Russian artist living in asylum in France of sexually explicit videos featuring the former government spokesman. Griveaux’s withdrawal is a major blow for the French president’s ruling party, already struggling in opinion surveys ahead of nationwide municipal elections in March.
Visiting Poland this week, French President Emmanuel Macron slammed the country’s government over its moves to take control of the judiciary, denouncing a “negation of European political principles”. In a tit-for-tat move, Polish members of the European Parliament launched a petition denouncing French police violence in recent demonstrations as “unjustified brutality against protestors exercising their civil rights”. The row has escalated through the week, and returned the spotlight to crowd policing methods in France, already the subject of outspoken concern from international bodies, and which over the past year have left hundreds injured, many seriously. Ellen Salvi reports.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took part in nationwide union-led protests in France on Tuesday against the government’s proposed reform of the pension system, while strike action disrupted many sectors including transport, education institutions, postal services and power supplies. Meanwhile, the government suffered a severe blow in its showdown with the unions after the forced resignation on Monday of the man regarded as the architect of the reforms, the High Commissioner for Pensions Jean-Paul Delevoye, for having failed to register as required by law ten of his present or recent outside professional activities. Now Mediapart can reveal yet another: his membership until 2017 of the London-based Brazzaville Foundation, which is in effect a propaganda arm for the strongman president of the Republic of the Congo.
In May 2019 former Italian government minister Sandro Gozi was elected as a French MP for the European Parliament representing Emmanuel Macron's ruling party and then became an advisor on Europe to the French prime minister Édouard Philippe. But unbeknown to both his former campaign team and the prime minister's office, Gozi was also an advisor to the government of Malta. The official insists he resigned that advisory role just after his election as an MEP and before he began working for the French prime minister. But after details of the curious affair became public, Sandro Gozi quit his post. Antton Rouget and Ellen Salvi report.
Right-wing politicians want religion-based election candidates lists to be banned in France. This comes after a group calling itself the Union of French Muslim Democrats stood in this year's European elections, in which it won just 0.13% of the popular vote. Some members of the government are said to be tempted by the idea of a ban, but President Emmanuel Macron has rejected this approach. Instead, Ellen Salvi reports, he is looking at other possible avenues, including extending the religious neutrality that civil servants have to observe to elected representatives.
In 2018 President Emmanuel Macron experienced a catastrophic period in domestic politics after the summer break. In 2019 the French head of state has tried to hit the ground running by placing himself firmly at the centre of the international stage. His hosting of the G7 summit in Biarritz in south-west France was greeted with unanimous approval by the French press which hailed it a success. Yet as Mediapart's Ellen Salvi reports, nothing in the substance of the issues tackled at the international gathering has changed.
When the affair over environment minister François de Rugy's use of public money first broke, President Emmanuel Macron was determined to hold firm and keep his minister in government. He did not want to “give an inch” to Mediapart he was reported as saying, and initially insisted that unless and until a criminal investigation was opened his minister should stay. But in the end, because of the impact the story was having among the public, and despite the fact that there was little real prospect of legal proceedings being started, President Macron bowed to political reality – and de Rugy left the government. Ellen Salvi reports.
The appointment this week of former conservative prime minister Alain Juppé to France’s highest constitutional authority, the Constitutional Council, has been met with surprise and controversy. The nomination of Juppé, who was convicted in 2004 over his role in a fraud scam at Paris City Hall, and who is the political mentor of French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, is joined by that of a former minister of Philippe’s government, and also of a conservative senator. As Mediapart political correspondent Ellen Salvi reports, the appointments to the Council, which is supposedly an independent body with ultimate power of decision over the validity of legislation but also that of elections, notably campaign funding, are likely to widen President Emmanuel Macron’s political base, and call into question his vision of the institution.
Despite strong criticism, including from inside the ranks of the ruling La République en Marche party, the French government's so-called 'anti-rioters' bill was due to be voted through by members of the National Assembly on Tuesday February 5th. Mediapart spoke to a number of prominent lawyers who are well-known defenders of civil liberties, including a supporter of President Emmanuel Macron, who have expressed their concern about yet another piece of repressive law and order legislation. Ellen Salvi reports.
Among the several ceremonies marking the centenary of the WW1 Armistice signed on November 11th 1918, France’s joint military chiefs of staff had planned a tribute, to be attended by President Emmanuel Macron, to the eight Marshals who fought in the Great War. The eight included Philippe Pétain, who led France’s collaborationist Vichy regime during German occupation of the country from 1940 to 1944. Macron’s office has made clear that the president will not attend any celebration of the disgraced figure, and said it is bewildered how such a ceremony "ended up" in the official presentation of Armistice centenary events without having been submitted for approval. Ellen Salvi reports.
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Six mois après les révoltes en Nouvelle-Calédonie, Mediapart est parti à la rencontre des indépendantistes kanak, en tribu, dans les quartiers populaires de Nouméa, mais aussi en « brousse », au nord de la capitale. Avec pour objectif de donner la parole à celles et ceux qui en sont d’ordinaire privés.
Mediapart lance « L’Œil de la recherche », une série de chroniques pour analyser les dynamiques des extrêmes droites françaises, européennes et mondiales. Loin des petites phrases, des coups de com’ et des bavardages.
Reportage, analyses, enquêtes... Dans le cadre du renforcement de sa couverture éditoriale sur les extrêmes droites, Mediapart a choisi d’investir deux postes d’observation dans lesquels elles sont au pouvoir : au gouvernement en Italie et à la tête de certaines municipalités dans le sud de la France.
Dans un contexte de plus en plus alarmant, Mediapart renforce encore sa couverture des extrêmes droites et lance une newsletter dédiée dans laquelle vous pourrez retrouver, chaque mois, nos enquêtes, nos reportages, nos analyses, mais aussi des rendez-vous inédits afin de casser la vitrine de la « normalisation ».
L’enquête préliminaire contre X..., ouverte en janvier 2013 à la suite d’une plainte pour « détournement de biens publics », déposée par un militant écologiste contre le député et maire UMP de Nice, a été classée sans suite le jeudi 7 novembre. Le plaignant pointe du doigt « les étonnantes conclusions des enquêteurs ».
