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.
After ten days of open crisis at the highest echelons of state, President Emmanuel Macron was on Tuesday October 2nd, 2018, forced to accept the resignation of interior minister Gérard Collomb – just hours after refusing it. Prime minister Édouard Philippe will become interim interior minister in the short term. Coming weeks after the resignation of high-profile environment minister Nicolas Hulot, this new departure further weakens the government, as Pauline Graulle, Manuel Jardinaud and Ellen Salvi report.
A series of controversial affairs involving key staff, some surprise resignations, comments from senior figures in his own administration and dysfunctional behaviour at all levels of government have left President Emmanuel Macron weaker than ever after the summer. There is growing concern inside his entourage where many now recognise that the presidency has a problem; and that this problem involves the president himself. Ellen Salvi reports.
The deputy mayor of Paris, Bruno Julliard, this week resigned from his post in a blistering attack on the French capital’s socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo, for who Julliard had previously been a close political ally. It was the latest significant blow for Hidalgo who hopes to be re-elected to the prestigious and politically strategic post in 2020. In this detailed report, Pauline Graulle and Ellen Salvi went behind the scenes at the Paris City Hall to hear from insiders their divided opinions on Hidalgo’s management of the riverside Hôtel de Ville, which increasingly appears like a ship taking on water.
The Benalla affair, which involved the French president's security aide, caused political damage to Emmanuel Macron at the start of France's summer break. The head of state hoped that the post-holiday resumption of political daily life would allow him to regain control of events. But following the shock resignation of his high-profile environment minister Nicolas Hulot, and with economic growth in France set to be lower than forecast this year, Macron seems once again at the mercy of events. Ellen Salvi analyses the French president's woes.
The French presidency on Thursday was engulfed in a developing scandal after it was revealed that an official advisor on President Emmanuel Macron’s personal security assaulted demonstrators in a Paris square on May 1st, while dressed as a police officer. Video footage clearly shows Alexandre Benalla manhandling a distressed woman before launching a vicious attack on a young man who was left on his knees in agony. It now emerges that the presidency was at the time made aware of the incidents, but Benalla was given only a two-week suspension from his post. Ellen Salvi reports.
On Monday April 9th France's National Assembly is due to begin examining the government's proposed legislation for a “new railway agreement”. Yet the consultations with the unions about this new pact are still going on. Those unions - whose members began the latest round of two-day rail strikes on Sunday April 8th - are now dismissing the talks with the government as a “farce” and intend to step up their action. Their aim is to expose what they see as a deliberate method employed by President Emmanuel Macron's government: one of talking but not saying anything and of listening without hearing. Ellen Salvi examines the workings of the Macron Method.
Emmanuel Macron has always insisted he is not worried about opinion polls and that, as head of state, he is willing to court unpopularity to do what he considers right for France. That has not stopped him basing his political strategy around what the public says, sometimes playing off the polls against critics of his reforms – even if that risks dividing the French people. Ellen Salvi looks at the French president's approach to public opinion.
French President Emmanuel Macron has enjoyed a headline-grabbing week of appearances, from hosting international CEOs in the sumptuous surrounds of the Palace of Versailles, to being feted by the world elite at the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland, before touching down in rural France to woo the country’s agricultural sector. The packed agenda was the latest example of the young president’s skill in occupying the media agenda and promoting double-pronged policies that have anesthetised public opinion, argues Mediapart editor François Bonnet, along with political and economic correspondents Romaric Godin, Manuel Jardinaud and Ellen Salvi, in this joint analysis of Macron's impressive mastership of the art of spin.
French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced on Wednesday that a controversial plan to build a major new airport near Nantes in north-west France, a project first mooted 50 years ago and which was bitterly opposed by environmentalists who prevented construction work from commencing by occupying the rural site, has been definitively abandoned. The decision ends decades of fudging by successive governments, infuriating supporters of the 600-million-euro project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes who argued it would have provided a much needed boost to the region’s economy.
The French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, which became a French colony in 1853, will hold a referendum next year on the proposition of self-rule. The referendum is the result of 30 years of a political process to ease tensions between pro-independence militants from the indigenous Kanak population, which make up about 45% of the archipelago’s 270,000 inhabitants, and ethnic Europeans. A key issue of the referendum will be the extent of involvement of the young generation, and in particular young Kanaks who are the worst affected by high unemployment and educational failure. Ellen Salvi reports from New Caledonia.
When the MPs who make up President Emmanuel Macron's ruling majority got their first taste of Parliamentary life this summer it was widely agreed that the representatives, many of them novices in politics, had not performed brilliantly. Now, just days before the next Parliamentary session opens, the La République en Marche (LREM) MPs have gone on a two-day “seminar” in a bid to give them an insight into how they should work both in the National Assembly and their constituencies. But as Christophe Gueugneau and Ellen Salvi report, the event was not an unqualified success, partly due to the lack of a common ideology to bind them together.
Havas, the communications, marketing and advertising giant owned by French billionaire businessman Vincent Bolloré, has for long played a key role in French politics, steering PR campaigns for both the rising stars and those who have fallen from grace. But its main political influence lies within the machine of government, where it guides ministerial strategies and former staff find new careers as senior advisors and heads of communications departments. As Mathieu Magnaudeix and Ellen Salvi report, with the election of Emmanuel Macron the network of the “Havas boys”, as one former minister described them, has never been more active at the heart of power.
All his blog posts
The Mediapart Club
Join the discussion
Mediapart’s journalists also use their blogs, and participate in their own name to this space of debates, by confiding behind the scenes of investigations or reports, doubts or personal reactions to the news.
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 ».
