Keyword: Emmanuel Macron

French President says he foresees at least some tourists returning to Paris this summer if they have been vaccinated or have proof of testing negative for the coronavirus.

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), a hothouse for those who make up France's political, economic and civil service jobs-for-life elite  –  and from where he himself graduated  – is to be closed

French President Emmanuel Macron and his predecessor François Hollande at the Élysée Palace in September 2017. © Julien Mattia / NurPhoto via AFP

In this second of a three-part series of investigations into the controversial sale by France to India of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft, Mediapart details how the then head of the French public prosecution services’ financial crimes branch, Éliane Houlette, shelved investigations into evidence of corruption behind the deal, despite the contrary opinion of her colleagues. France’s current president, Emmanuel Macron, and his predecessor, François Hollande, are cited in the allegations levelled in the case. Houlette has since justified her decision as preserving “the interests of France, the workings of institutions”. Yann Philippin reports. 

The French president has imposed a national lockdown, but he still will not own up to his mistakes and broken promises, argues academic Philippe Marlière.

Some of the 30 MPs who have quit Emmanuel Macron's ruling La République en Marche party. © DR

Since the Parliamentary elections held in 2017 around 30 Members of Parliament have deserted the ranks of Emmanuel Macron's ruling La République en Marche party. Some have joined other movements, a few have set up their own groups while others simply sit as independents. A year before the next presidential and Parliamentary elections, Mediapart's Ellen Salvi talked to some of these MPs about why they supported Emmanuel Macron in 2017 but are not prepared to do so in 2022.

The number of Covid cases found in French schools, week by week.

There has been exponential growth in the number of Covid-19 cases in French schools, both among pupils and staff, and some teaching personnel have become seriously ill as a result. Though the education minister has just announced a further toughening of the health protocols to tackle the virus in schools, some teachers fear the ministry is still “in denial” over the scale of the problem they are facing. One teaching union is now calling on members to take strike action. Ismaël Bine and Caroline Coq-Chodorge report.

© Mediapart

The word 'Republican' has a hugely positive place in the French collective memory. But recently the concept has come to be used – and abused - as a form of political shorthand to tell people to obey the rules. Mediapart's Fabien Escalona talks to French academics about the shifting meaning of the concept and how it is now cited more to protect existing privileges rather than to extend safeguards and rights to new groups.

French president said the EU had been late in ramping up vaccine production and jabs, but was catching up and would become the world’s biggest producer of vaccines this summer.

French president says Europe's sluggish rollout of vaccines againt Covid 'should be a lesson for all of us'.

Ties between French leader and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been tense over issues ranging from religion to energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.

Prime minister Jean Castex did however announce a weekend lockdown for the northerly Pas-de-Calais area, like that already imposed on the French Riviera.

The French president made the admission "in the name of France" during a meeting with Ali Boumendjel's grandchildren.

French  Macron said AstraZeneca vaccine was "almost ineffective" in the over-65s but his government has announced an apparent U-turn by approving the jab for some older people.

President Emmanuel Macron and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo on July 24th 2020. © Franck Fife/AFP

The city authorities in Paris, led by mayor Anne Hidalgo, have suggested that the French capital and surrounding region be put under a new lockdown to tackle the worsening Covid-19 virus situation there. This has piled pressure on President Emmanuel Macron who has been described by some as the country's “epidemiologist-in-chief” and who has so far resisted growing calls for a lockdown not just in the capital but across France. As Ellen Salvi reports, the Paris authorities are effectively asking a question that the head of state's supporters are refusing to countenance: what if the French president has got it wrong?