© Simon Toupet / Mediapart

An investigation by a ministerial department found that some of the private security services provided for Emmanuel Macron's 2017 presidential campaign were “in all probability carried out in illegal circumstances”. The probe unearthed claims of cash payments and of unlicensed security staff working at political rallies. Yet the final report, written by a department in the Ministry of the Interior, was buried in 2020 by a senior civil servant who decided no further action should be taken – against the advice of three of his senior staff. Mediapart can reveal the documentary evidence of how these potentially embarrassing allegations were shelved. Fabrice Arfi, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi report.

Paolo Vineis. © Chaine YouTube The Climate group

Around the world, tens of thousands of chemicals are present in the environment, in soil, the air and in water, and little is known about their individual consequences on human health nor how to measure them. Lifelong exposure to environmental pollution and the non-genetic causation of diseases this may have is the focus of a relatively recent and pioneering field of inter-disciplinary scientific research, and which encompasses social and dietary factors, a notion called the ‘exposome’. In this interview with Mediapart’s Jade Lindgaard, epidemiologist Paolo Vineis, one of Europe’s leading specialists on the subject, explains the umbrella approach of ‘exposomics’.       

Far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour. © Samuel Boivin / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP

Last November, far-right polemicist Éric Zemmour, a newspaper columnist and TV pundit with several conviction for hate speech, announced he was standing in France’s presidential elections. Without an established party apparatus behind him, Zemmour’s campaign team have been networking the wealthy in search of financial donors. Mediapart has gained access to documents that reveal the identities of 35 of the largest donors, mostly found through fundraising dinners where guests include industrialists, bankers, high-flying lawyers and management consultants. Sébastien Bourdon, Ariane Lavrilleux and Marine Turchi report.

From left: Michèle Marchand, Ziad Takieddine, Nicolas Sarkozy, Brice Hortefeux and Thierry Gaubert. © Photo illustration Sébastien Calvet / Mediapart

An ongoing French judicial investigation into “witness tampering” centres on a secret operation in late 2020 to successfully convince a key witness in the probe into suspected Libyan funding of Nicola Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, business intermediary Ziad Takieddine, to publicly retract his statements detailing the illicit funding. Mediapart has gained access to emerging evidence in the witness tampering case, and which throws further light on the links between members of the disparate group behind the operation and the former president’s entourage. Karl Laske and Fabrice Arfi report.

A primary school class in Vouillé, close to Poitiers, north-west France, January 5th 2022. © Photo Jean-Francois Fort/Hans Lucas via AFP

French school teachers and education staff held a crippling strike and nationwide protest marches last Thursday over what they say are chaotic and unsafe working conditions brought about by ever-changing, last-minute anti-Covid measures imposed without consultation by the education ministry, and which they too often learn about from the media. Mathilde Goanec has been hearing from teachers and local councils about their nigh impossible mission amid the government’s determination to keep schools open.

A sticker on a lamppost saying no to the Covid-19 vaccine, at Montreuil in the Paris suburbs. © NB.

Less than a week ago President Emmanuel Macron caused controversy when he said he wanted to “piss off” the unvaccinated in France, whom he described as “irresponsible” and “no longer citizens” in his eyes. As Mediapart has found out, these comments shocked people who have not – yet – made the decision to get vaccinated against Covid. Divided between those who have doubts about the vaccine, others who are afraid, or some who simply feel that it is their duty to defend public liberties, the unvaccinated say they feel misunderstood and are unhappy about being stigmatised. Nejma Brahim reports.

Emmanuel Macron at a meeting of the Defence Council to discuss the pandemic, December 27th 2021. © Nicolas Tucat/Pool/AFP

In an interview with daily newspaper Le Parisien French president Emmanuel Macron cheerfully admitted that he wanted to “piss off” those who had chosen not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 as much as possible. The comment has made headlines around the world. But less remarked upon was his extraordinary description of anyone unvaccinated as an “irresponsible person who is no longer a citizen”. In saying this, says Mediapart's political correspondent Ellen Salvi, the head of state – the guarantor of law in the French Republic – has committed a moral, institutional and political error. In this op-ed article she argues that Emmanuel Macron is adding hysteria to the debate, dividing society and giving fresh impetus to the very people he is claiming to be combating.

Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée, May 16th 2022. © Photo Ludovic Marin / AFP

As far as his party and some commentators are concerned, Emmanuel Macron sent a “signal to the Left” this week by appointing Élisabeth Borne as France's new prime minister. It is a sleight of hand that would be laughable if it did not also highlight how the head of state is continuing his attempts to deconstruct the French political arena, argues Mediapart political reporter Ellen Salvi in this opinion article.

Emmanuel Macron during his televised New Year's message on December 31st 2021, the last of his presidency. © Martin Bureau/AFP

On Friday evening Emmanuel Macron delivered the final New Year's presidential broadcast to the nation of his five-year term of office. Ahead of April's presidential elections – for which Macron has yet to officially declare himself as a candidate – the incumbent gave a rapid overview of what he sees as his achievements in office. Despite the Covid pandemic, President Macron sought to describe a political landscape that embraced both “optimism” and “tolerance” - an assessment, says Ellen Salvi, that stands in stark contrast to the reality of his presidency. Political opponents immediately accused the president of being “out of touch”.

Inside Tricastin’s N°1 reactor building (June 27th 2019). © Philippe Desmazes/AFP

A massive leak of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, occurred earlier this month at the Tricastin nuclear power plant, one of the oldest in France, when subsequent radiation levels recorded in groundwater below it reached 28,900 becquerels per litre. Both the plant’s operator, EDF, and the French nuclear safety watchdog, the ASN, insist that the spill has been contained. But, as Jade Lindgaard reports, despite that claim it appears inevitable that that the radioactive effluent will pollute the local environment.

Frans Timmermans, European Commission vice-president. © Photo Fred Marvaux/European Union

The upheaval of Russia’s war against Ukraine has further tested the already challenging agenda for the introduction of the European Commission’s measures on climate change, and notably its ambitious ‘Green Deal’ programme aimed at making the EU carbon neutral by 2050. The man in the hot seat is Frans Timmermans, European Commission vice-president responsible for the Green Deal and climate change measures. In this interview with Mediapart, he discusses the impact on the bloc of the war in Ukraine, the fossil fuel quandary, why European agriculture must move away from intensive farming to a sustainable, environmentalist model, and why he calls upon political leaders to show the “courage to recognise the crisis that we are in”.

Christophe Naudin (left) with Georges Salines, September 2021. © © Photo Sébastien Calvet / Mediapart

The nine-month trial in Paris of 20 individuals accused of variously perpetrating or assisting the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks by the so-called Islamic State group in the French capital, in which 130 people died and more than 400 were wounded, opened in September. Throughout the trial, Mediapart is publishing the first-hand reactions of seven victims, who either survived the attacks or who lost loved ones, as the hearings unfold. Here, Georges Salines, whose daughter died in the shooting massacre of 90 people at the Bataclan music hall, and Christophe Naudin, who lost a close friend in the same attack which he himself survived, give their views of what emerged from the cross-examination this month of the families of the gunmen.

Election posters of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in Paris, April 2022. © Photo Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas via AFP

An analysis of the final results of last Sunday's presidential election shows the extent to which Emmanuel Macron's electoral strategy paid off handsomely, while at the same time indicating that support for the far-right is now firmly entrenched across the country. It is now abundantly clear that France has entered a new political era. But the results also highlight the risk that whole sections of the population could be left stranded without proper political representation for years to come. Fabien Escalona and Donatien Huet report.

An OCRIEST officer arresting a suspect during the search of an apartment in the Paris suburb of Viry-Chatillon, March 2014. © Photo Martin Bureau / AFP

On November 24th, at least 27 people died when their inflatable dinghy sank in the Channel as they attempted a clandestine crossing to the UK from France. Behind the crossings are highly organised criminal gangs which make vast profits from the migrant trafficking, even ordering container loads of small boats from China. They are the target of a dedicated French police agency called the OCRIEST, which is investigating last month’s tragedy. In this interview with Mediapart, its director, Xavier Delrieu, details how the gangs operate and the methods employed to dismantle them.

Claude Guéant at the Paris law courts, December 5th 2018. © Photo Eric Feferberg / AFP

Claude Guéant, once Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-hand man, a former French police chief who remained faithful throughout the scandals that have since engulfed the former French president, was on Monday jailed in the Santé prison in Paris. Fabrice Arfi and Michel Deléan report on the fall of a man nicknamed ‘The Cardinal’, whose loyalty was rewarded with posts that elevated him to secretary general of the presidential office, the Élysée Palace, and subsequently as Sarkozy’s hardline law-and-order interior minister, who is implicated in numerous corruption scandals and who, in the eyes of investigating magistrates, has yet to tell the full truth of what he knows about his former boss.