In February the French Parliament's upper chamber, the Senate, backed a bill that would ban the wearing of the headscarf in sports competitions. It is a sign of sport has become the latest excuse being used by those in authority to justify a legislative offensive against French women who wear the hijab. Indeed, France's interior minister Bruno Retailleau has made it his battle of choice, and at a public meeting recently he declared “down with the headscarf”. It is an issue that is normally the favoured territory of the far-right. But as Samia Dechir and Marie Turcan argue in this op-ed article, all the latter need do now is grab the popcorn and watch  as the government itself goes on the attack.

The court verdict that has effectively barred far-right leader Marine Le Pen from standing at the 2027 presidential election, preceded by prosecutors’ demands for former president Nicolas Sarkozy to receive a seven-year prison sentence in the Sarkozy-Gaddafi Libyan funding trial, have one thing in common. Within the space of a few days both pronouncements provoked unbridled populist rhetoric railing against the rule of law. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Fabrice Arfi argues that beneath this outcry there lies a deep longing for the return of privileges and for the end of equality before the law.

On March 31st a court in Paris found far-right leader Marine Le Pen guilty of the embezzlement of European funds and banned her from public office for five years. This rules her out of standing at the 2027 presidential elections in France. She was also sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended and given a 100,000-euro fine. Marine Le Pen's tough sentence has plunged her far-right Rassemblement National party into a state of panic, amid calls for an uprising, the condemnation of a “dictatorship of judges” and wider fears for the future, given that its natural candidate will now probably not be able to run in 2027. And while both the Right and far-right have fiercely attacked the judges, the radical-left La France Insoumise was the only leftwing party to oppose the principle of the political ban being enforced immediately without waiting for the outcome of any appeal. Youmni Kezzouf reports.

For more than twenty years residents living near a steel plant operated by ArcelorMittal at Fos-sur-Mer on France's Mediterranean coast have been campaigning against the pollution it has been spewing out. According to Mediapart's information, and later confirmed by local prosecutors in nearby Marseille, the multinational steel giant ArcelorMittal – run by Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal - has now been placed under formal investigation over the pollution. The criminal probe centres on claims that the steel plant has exposed residents to illegal emissions and put their lives in danger. The company says it denies the accusations. Pascale Pascariello reports.

The trial of Nicolas Sarkozy and 11 others on corruption charges relating to the alleged funding of the former French president’s 2007 election campaign by the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is now entering its final stages after prosecutors on Thursday called for Sarkozy to be handed a seven-year jail sentence and a 300,000-euro fine. Mediapart looks back at the significant moments of the trial so far, before the court hears the arguments for the defence of Sarkozy and his co-accused, who include three former ministers. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

In a lively and to-the-point essay published this month in France, historian Sophie Bessis analyses the notion and roots of the phrase “Judeo-Christian civilisation”, a now commonly employed expression that is also an ideology. In her book, reviewed here by Joseph Confavreux, she argues that “this extraordinary semantic and ideological invention" is a concept that is fundamentally flawed, and a deception employed as a political weapon.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was questioned for the final time this week at his trial, alongside 12 other defendants, over the alleged funding of his 2007 presidential election campaign by the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Sarkozy has insisted he is innocent of the charges of corruption, criminal conspiracy, receipt of the proceeds of the misappropriation of (Libyan) public funds, and illegal campaign financing, and this week denounced what he called “the basic premise” of the prosecution services that he is guilty. “I’m not a highwayman, I’m not a bandit”, he told the court this week. Karl Laske reports.

Paris-Beauvais airport caters essentially for low-cost airlines, chief among them Ryanair, and is a major, popular hub for budget flights to and from the Paris region. In 2024, a total of more than 6.5 million passengers passed through the airport, and its new operators, awarded a 30-year concession estimated to be worth around 4 billion euros, now plan to increase passenger numbers to an annual turnover of 9.4 million. But in a David-and-Goliath-like combat, local resident and environmentalist associations are mounting a legal challenge to halt the expansion, citing the threat to public health and the acceleration of climate change. Mickaël Correia reports.

While mention of the word torture was banned from official language at the time, the French military in Algeria encouraged the use of torture during the 1954-1962 war of independence, and with the consent of the government in Paris. Historian Fabrice Riceputi, an associate researcher with the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (IHTP), specialised in the events of the independence war, details here how, after the military experimented with torture and forced disappearances during the 1957 Battle of Algiers, French generals recommended a generalisation of the practice.

In a landmark ruling, the Paris administrative court of appeal this week found that the French state must pay damages to victims of the carcinogenic insecticide chlordecone, which it allowed to be used on banana plantations on France’s Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe for three years after it was banned on the mainland. The court has also widened the criteria of eligibility for the compensation. Amélie Poinssot reports.