The battle against the French government's pension reform is not simply just another protest movement. Three crucial issues are at stake here: social, democratic and civilisational, as shown by the exceptional unity among trade unions opposed to the changes, argues Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. All the more reason, he writes, to put all our energy into supporting this combat.
From social democrats to the radical Left, leftwing parties in France are embracing or at least debating the concept of ecosocialism. As Mediapart's Mathieu Dejean writes, this collective appropriation of a radical idea that stems from the 1970s marks a new phase in the reconstruction of the French Left as it seeks to find a common view of the world.
The French president has just completed a five-day tour of four African countries, Gabon, Angola, Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before he left Paris, Emmanuel Macron delivered what was billed as a keynote speech on the future of France's relations with the continent. Yet as Justine Brabant and Ilyes Ramdani say in this analysis of that speech, the French head of state instead delivered a series of clichés and untruths. And, they say, he showed himself incapable of acknowledging his own policy failures in his dealings with African nations.
With the help of leaked documents and witness accounts, Mediapart reveals the inside story on the United Arab Emirates' strategy to influence opinion in France, an operation involving private intelligence gathering and the manipulation of information . The story features an Emirati intelligence agent, a private intelligence agency in Switzerland, academics and two well-known French journalists. Another name that also crops up is that of President Emmanuel Macron's former bodyguard Alexandre Benalla. Yann Philippin and Antton Rouget investigate.
Comments from Tunisian president Kaïs Saïed over the presence of sub-Saharan migrants in the North African country and his talk of a “criminal plan” to change the nation's demographics have provoked a row. Students who come from sub-Saharan Africa now say they are living in fear and have been told to stay indoors to avoid being targeted. Meanwhile some migrant workers have been forcibly evicted from their homes. Lilia Blaise reports on a controversy in Tunisia which is also being exploited by France's far-right failed presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.
Access to ownership or rental of agricultural land for French farmers setting up an activity is proving increasingly difficult, in part because of the rising prices fuelled by private and agribusiness investors in mega-farms, and also because of the increasing fragmentation of smallholdings, according to two reports published this week. Both call for the swift introduction of measures to reverse a trend that threatens a profound change in French agriculture. Amélie Poinssot reports.
In July 1955, Ginette and Claude Bac were handed a two-year prison sentence for involuntarily causing the death through lack of care of their fourth child, eight-month-old Danielle. The tragedy of how Ginette Bac became lost in a deep depression after falling pregnant four times in as many years became a turning point in France for the campaign to legalise contraception, and led to the creation of the country’s family planning association. Mathilde Blézat reports.
The washed-up corpse of an infant girl (photo) was found on December 24th on a beach in Tunisia’s Kerkennah Islands, in almost identical circumstances as that of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, found on a beach in Turkey in 2015. Both drowned during an attempted crossing of the Mediterranean Sea. But while the shocking photo of the little boy’s body made headlines around the world, that of the unidentified little girl has prompted no such interest, nor any political reaction, highlighting a creeping indifference towards such tragedies. Nejma Brahim reports from Tunisia, where she spoke with those who routinely face the horrors of the Mediterranean ‘graveyard’.
After the recapture by Ukraine last autumn of territories occupied by Russia since its invasion of the country in February 2022, there is a strong public demand that those who collaborated with the occupier should be brought to account before the courts. Beyond the most flagrant cases, the legal process of identifying collaboration can be both complicated and sensitive, with some having acted voluntarily, others under duress. The prosecution services, meanwhile, are under pressure to act swiftly. Carine Fouteau reports from the city of Kharkiv and its surrounds, liberated last September.
German aerospace engineer Lutz Kayser was the first to develop, as of the 1970s, a technology for the private launching of satellite-carrying rockets at relatively low cost. But the dreams of the Nazi nostalgist would fall to earth with a bump when he became caught up in the geopolitical realities of the Cold War amid his attempts to set up his operations with the help of two African dictators. His story is the subject of Projet Wotan, a book recently published in France by the journalist Joëlle Stolz.
