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.
The far-right has never been so close to power. And given that it is the worst enemy of equality, rights and freedom, voting against its candidate on Sunday April 24th is the only anti-fascist option in the French presidential election, writes Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. But, he says, it will be a painful act, because the other name on the ballot paper is that of the person who is chiefly responsible for this catastrophe: Emmanuel Macron.
The results of the first round of France’s presidential elections on Sunday have demonstrated that the political earthquake of the elections in 2017, when Emmanuel Macron arrived in office, was no passing aberration. Instead, the voting last weekend confirmed the endurance of a new electoral landscape in France, with the old mainstream socialist and conservative parties of government left in tatters, replaced by a centre-right behind Macron, a strengthened far-right and a Left dominated by its ‘Green-and-red’ movements. This analysis by Fabien Escalona and Donatien Huet.
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.
What do former supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy, the left-wing nationalist Jean-Pierre Chevènement, and the right-wing ex-minister Éric Woerth have in common? They are all supporting current president Emmanuel Macron in his bid for re-election. Backing for the incumbent from such disparate groups is a clear sign of how the old forces of government in France – the traditional Right and Left - have run out of steam. It also highlights the extent to which social democrats have effectively abandoned the political field. With the first round of the presidential election taking place on Sunday April 10th, Fabien Escalona looks at how Macron's 'big tent' politics has got even bigger, and examines some of the resulting dangers for French politics.
A Malian army unit accompanied by foreign mercenaries, who from witness accounts appear to be members of Russia's paramilitary Wagner Group, last week carried out summary executions of hundreds of people in the town of Moura, in the centre of Mali, in an operation officially described as a crackdown on jihadist insurgents, according to a report by NGO Human Rights Watch. Mediapart’s West Africa correspondent Rémi Carayol has spoken to survivors of the massacre and with various sources including local rights activists, who say the dead, variously estimated to number between 300 and 600, were mostly non-jihadist civilians.
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.
Mediapart is today publishing the alleged false invoices that enabled French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation to pay at least 7.5 million euros in secret commissions to a middleman to help secure the sale of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft to India. Yet despite the existence of these documents, the Indian federal police has decided not to pursue the affair and has not begun an investigation. Yann Philippin reports.
