At his first major political rally ahead of next year's presidential elections, radical left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon positioned himself as a bastion of the Left against the Right and far right in France. The veteran founder of La France Insoumise also showed at the gathering in Paris that he was able to pull together a diverse range of figures from across the left of the political spectrum. Pauline Graulle reports.
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”.
The emergence of the new variant of Covid-19 called Omicron should serve as a wakeup call to rich countries that unless the whole world is given access to vaccines the pandemic is doomed to continue. Instead, the new variant was given as the reason why a key meeting at the World Trade Organisation to debate the temporary lifting of intellectual property rights on vaccines was postponed indefinitely. Rozenn Le Saint reports on the anger of French activists at the lack of progress on what they see as a key issue in tacking the pandemic in poorer countries.
Despite this country's proclaimed values and its international commitments, French-made weapons are being used to carry out repression and kill civilians in some of the worst conflicts on the planet, including in the Middle East. On the eve of President Emmanuel Macron's tour of Gulf states on 3rd and 4th December, in which further arms deals may be clinched, Mediapart lists some of the conflicts where exported French armaments are being deployed. Rachida El Azzouzi reports.
Up to seven million people in France, or around 10 percent of the population, had need of free handouts of food in 2020, a situation unprecedented in peacetime. That was just one of the shocking conclusions of the latest annual report on poverty in France published by one of the country’s principal social and humanitarian aid associations, the Secours Catholique. Faïza Zerouala reports.
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.
Staff working under French microbiologist Didier Raoult, who last year attracted worldwide attention, and notably from Donald Trump, with his claims that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was an effective medication for the prevention and treatment of Covid-19, have accused him of falsifying biological test results to support his assertions. Pascale Pascariello reports.
Railcoop, a small French cooperative railways company this week inaugurated its first service, carrying freight for small businesses in the south-west of the country. The cooperative is the first of its kind in Europe, and it has big plans ahead, beginning with the opening next year of a passenger service across central France linking the cities of Bordeaux and Lyon and, along the way, dozens of small towns previously abandoned by France’s historic railways operator, the SNCF. As Nicolas Cheviron reports, for the cooperative's staff and stakeholders the launch this week was a two-year dream come true.
Two people have been remanded in custody in the aftermath of the operation in which Ziad Takieddine, a key witness in the Nicolas Sarkozy-Libyan funding affair, made a false retraction of his evidence. One of the men in detention is the wealthy businessman Pierre Reynaud. As Mediapart can reveal, aspects of the saga have taken on the appearance of a Martin Scorsese crime movie. Fabrice Arfi, Karl Laske and Antton Rouget report.
As the 2022 presidential election edges closer there are signs that the swathe of young people who have become radicalised over the climate in France since 2018 are now starting to take a closer interest in politics and the need to vote. But as Mathieu Dejean explains in this analysis, the fragmentation on the Left ahead of next April's poll leaves many young 'climate generation' voters distinctly unimpressed.
