Cour des comptes

The new French government has reacted as if it were surprised at the news that the French-led project to build a new nuclear power station in south-west England is already behind schedule and over budget. Yet it has known about the financial and technical risks posed by the Hinkley Point scheme for a long time, says Martine Orange. For the minister who personally backed and oversaw the massive project during the last presidency now himself occupies the Élysée.

In 2015 the head of France's National Audiovisual Institute (INA), Agnès Saal, had to quit after piling up thousands of euros in taxi fares in under a year. Now, Mediapart can reveal, the country's spending watchdog, the Cour des Comptes, has pointed the finger at her predecessor Mathieu Gallet over his predilection for expensive hotels and restaurants. Gallet, who ran the INA for seven years before taking over as head of Radio France in 2014, is also criticised over the way the INA awarded lucrative communications and image consultancy contracts during his time in charge. Mathilde Mathieu reports.

Several of France's favourite radio stations, listened to by a quarter of the country's population, have been disrupted by an almost three-week-long strike at Radio France, with many popular programmes taken off the air. The dispute centres on a plan of spending cuts and the shedding of more than 300 jobs, and has become the longest in the history of the public broadcaster, which runs flagship stations France Inter, France Info, France Culture, and France Musique. That prompted culture minister Fleur Pellerin to order management to resume talks with staff, but these ended in stalemate over the Easter weekend. While Radio France, which is 90% state-funded, faces a 21.3 million-euro deficit in 2015, and with the future of one of its two acclaimed orchestras under threat, its boss was forced to apologise for lavish spending on his office and consultants. Meanwhile, France's national audit court has advised that Radio France should save money by merging its four main editorial teams into just one. In this opinion article, Mediapart's Hubert Huertas, a former journalist with France Culture who was also head of the French national journalists' union (SNJ) branch at Radio France, gives his scathing analysis of how a budgetary issue has been turned into a political crisis.