Soaring energy costs have thrown the once flourishing glass-making industry in France into a crisis, and this has notably hit the small- and medium-sized businesses that account for an important part of its estimated 22,000-strong workforce. As glass-makers report a year-on-year quadrupling of their energy bills amid a parallel economic slowdown, some have been forced to shut down their ovens and to place staff on short-time working, and many now face the chilling prospect of not being able to survive the winter. Mathias Thépot reports.
Last month, the French government announced it will re-nationalise utility giant EDF which, also last month, has reported historic first-half losses in 2022 of 5.3 billion euros. EDF’s financial woes are exacerbated by the unprecedented shut-downs due to repairs and maintenance of more than half its fleet of 56 nuclear reactors, and the government’s cap on electricity price rises. Martine Orange reports on the background to what is the most perilous situation the company has known in its 76 years of existence.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Paris on Thursday for talks with President Emmanuel Macron who later hosted him for dinner at the Élysée Palace, amid outrage from rights activists. In exchange for staging the prince’s comeback on the international diplomatic scene, four years after the murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, Macron was hoping to obtain a substantial rise in Saudi oil production. But, as René Backmann writes in this analysis of Macron’s dealings with “MBS”, the move may well prove to benefit only he who Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard has dubbed “the murderous prince”.
Mediapart has already revealed how a French firm that works for foreign directorships and the bosses of some of the biggest business groups in France, including billionaire Bernard Arnault, has been accused of manipulating information through various blogs, including on our own site. Today that same company, Avisa Partners, is suspected of having modified pages on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on behalf of its powerful clients. Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.
Concrete is the second most consumed product on the planet after water and its environmental impact is huge. As the climate crisis unfolds, major companies in the sector in France and around the world have made repeated promises that they will achieve carbon neutrality. But as Floriane Louison reports, so far this 'greenwashing' has produced very few effective solutions.
A detailed “social autopsy” by sociologist Eric Klinenberg examined the heatwave that killed more than 700 people in the American city during one week in July 1995. According to the American academic it was the existence of strong social ties and urban vibrancy that helped stop more people from dying, and not free phone helplines such as the French authorities are issuing to help people in the heatwave currently suffocating France and other parts of Europe. Mediapart's environment correspondent Jade Lindgaard reports on the lessons for the rest of the world from Chicago's devastating heatwave 27 years ago.
The Élysée cited business confidentiality when it refused to provide Mediapart with correspondence between presidential advisors and Amazon, Google and others giants of the digital world dating from 2017. However, Mediapart pursued the matter and after a lengthy process the administrative court in Paris found in our favour and we now have access to these documents. Like the recent 'Uber Files' controversy, they show just how closely aligned the thinking and approach of these technological groups is with that of Macron and his entourage. And also like the Uber case, they reveal that a business lobbyist from one of the groups – in this case Amazon - took part in Emmanuel Macron's 2017 presidential campaign. Alexandre Léchenet reports.
After environmentalists protested over plans by farmers in western France to build a large irrigation reservoir, interior minister Gérald Darmanin likened some of the demonstrators to “ecoterrorists”. In doing so, say Mathieu Dejean and Fabien Escalona in this op-ed article, the minister was spouting paranoid fantasies while ignoring warnings about whether the planet can remain habitable. At the same time, they write, the country's main green party – which should be setting the political agenda - remains bogged down in internal squabbles.
In early June around 30 indigenous Maasai people in the north-east of Tanzania were injured as they protested against being forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands. The authorities say the move is necessary to protect the area's extraordinary landscape and wildlife. But as Michael Pauron reports, lurking in the background to this affair are the interests of a private hunting company that has close ties to the royal family in Dubai.
President Emmanuel Macron's key aide in the Élysée, his chief of staff Alexis Kohler, has faced two investigations into an alleged unlawful acquisition of an interest and “influence peddling” over his family links with major shipping line MSC. The first was dropped back in 2018 but another was launched in 2020 and is still ongoing. The current investigation has unearthed some troubling documents for Alexis Kohler, whose official title is secretary-general of the Élysée. Not only do they show him to have been far more involved than thought with issues involving MSC while working as a civil servant, some potentially important documents and emails have also vanished from certain locations - though they have been retrieved elsewhere – in what appears to have been an attempt to remove the paper trail of his interventions. Martine Orange reports on the continuing investigation into President Macron's right-hand man.
