Idriss, who is originally from Sudan, has lived in Brittany in north-western France since 2016 and runs a market garden for an association which helps migrants interested in a career in agriculture. In early July, during the parliamentary election campaign which saw increased support for the far-right, this social enterprise was targeted by racist attacks on two successive nights. Idriss has reported both incidents to the authorities, and says he fears that someone could get hurt if there are similar episodes in the future. Nejma Brahim reports.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy recently insisted that France was now politically a right-leaning country, probably more so than it has “ever been”. However, political scientist Vincent Tiberj disputes the widespread notion that there has been a rightwards shift “from the bottom up” in French society. Instead he prefers to point the finger of responsibility for recent voting patterns at media and political elites, against a backdrop of growing political disengagement among citizens. However, as Mediapart's Fabien Escalona writes, it would be unwise for the Left to seize on this as a reassuring counter-narrative.
In order to host the 2024 Olympic Games, which were officially opened in Paris on Friday evening, the public authorities in France caved in to the demands of the International Olympic Committee. Yet, argues Mediapart's Antton Rouget in this op-ed article, the IOC is a clannish organisation that imposes its model and enriches itself without ever being accountable to anyone.
“That's not the issue,” the French president responded when asked about the prospect of nominating a prime minister from the Left. Speaking on France 2 television, Emmanuel Macron did finally acknowledge that he had lost the recent parliamentary elections but, writes Mediapart’s publishing editor Carine Fouteau in this op-ed article, he still refuses to face up to the consequences, and instead imagines he can carry on with the policies that have led both him and France into a dead end. She argues that the president's continuing scheming to remain in power – which includes calling for a political 'truce' during the Paris Olympics - poses a threat to the rule of law.
Cross-country skier Stéphane Passeron, a former member of the French team and a Paralympic coach at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, argues that major sporting and cultural events are no longer compatible with the current climate crisis. As a campaign group asks for France's bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics to be scrapped, the veteran skier goes further and calls for an end to all major sporting events, such as the Olympics, the Tour de France and the football World Cup. Instead, argues Stéphane Passeron, we need to “make sport local”. Interview by Jade Lindgaard.
By revealing details of an internal investigation implicating their celebrated founder Abbé Pierre in sexual assault, the high-profile charities Emmaüs and the Abbé Pierre Foundation are now doing an exemplary job, despite past denials of any problem, argues Mediapart's joint editor-in-chief Lénaïg Bredoux in this op-ed article. The world of sport - notably football and rugby - is also experiencing similarly turbulent times, she says, amid signs that sections of French society are beginning to face up to the issue.
In an interview with Mediapart, French constitutional law specialist Jean-Marie Denquin analyses the implications of centrist MP Yaël Braun-Pivet's re-election as president of the National Assembly on Thursday, when she narrowly beat the Left's own candidate for this prestigious and important post. This was despite the fact that the Left had won more seats than anyone else in the recent elections, while Emmanuel Macron's centre-right alliance itself lost scores of MPs. The academic also outlines the broader challenges facing the Left with the advent of what he calls a “new system” - a parliamentary rather than the previous presidential one - that favours the concentration of power at the centre rather than the extremes. Interview by Fabien Escalona.
As the Paris Olympic Games get closer – the opening ceremony is on July 26th - France's Ministry of the Interior has been stepping up at an unprecedented rate the number of administrative control and surveillance measures on those they see as potential security threats. People's jobs and even their homes are under threat as house arrest orders are placed on individuals who have never been in trouble with the law before – or not for many years. Jérôme Hourdeaux reports.
Mediapart has obtained the rushes, hitherto unseen in public, of a video interview with Ziad Takieddine, a key witness in the probe into the alleged Libyan funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, in which the Franco-Lebanese business intermediary retracted his earlier testimony detailing how Sarkozy received the cash sums from Tripoli. The video was broadcast as an edited 32-second “exclusive” in November 2020 by French rolling news channel BFMTV, before Takieddine, who had been promised payment, finally disowned his retraction and an investigation into “witness tampering” was launched. The unedited video rushes, published in this report, reveal the extent of the manipulation by BFMTV in operation dubbed “Save Sarko”. Fabrice Arfi, Karl Laske and Antton Rouget report.
In November 2020, a key witness in the French judicial investigation into alleged funding by the Gaddafi regime of former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign publicly retracted his testimony. French-Lebanese business intermediary Ziad Takieddine had previously detailed how he brought suitcases of cash from Tripoli to Paris for Sarkozy’s campaign. A separate judicial investigation into “witness tampering” subsequently established that Takieddine had been promised several million euros to retract his allegations. Mediapart can now reveal how, illustrated by a remarkable exchange of phone text messages, the management of France’s rolling news channel BFMTV, which broadcast a video of Takieddine’s retraction, connived with the attempt to undermine the Libyan funding probe. Fabrice Arfi, Karl Laske and Antton Rouget report.
