As of the start of the new academic year in September, French 'collèges' - secondary schools for 11- to 15-year-olds - will require pupils to lock away their mobile phones during school hours following the reported success of local trials.
The trial of Nicolas Sarkozy and 11 others on corruption charges relating to the alleged funding of the former French president’s 2007 election campaign by the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi ended this week with the speeches of Sarkozy’s defence team. The four lawyers spoke for five hours calling for the charges against him to be thrown out and denouncing an “empty” case brought by prosecutors, who have requested Sarkozy be handed a seven-year prison sentence. Given the final word on Tuesday before the judges announce their verdicts in September, Sarkozy dismissed what he said was a “political and violent” prosecution case. Fabrice Arfi was in court on the day the curtain went down on an extraordinary trial.
The three-month trial of Nicolas Sarkozy and three of his former ministers on charges of corruption related to the alleged funding of his 2007 election campaign by the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi drew to a close in Paris on Tuesday, when the former French president, given the opportunity to deliver a final comment, described the prosecution case as being 'political and violent'.
French president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday wound up a two-day visit to Cairo where he held talks with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah II on the situation in Gaza, when the three issued a statement calling for the 'immediate' return of a ceasefire.
A recycling plant in north-west Paris, treating the domestic waste of around 900,000 people, was completely destroyed by a fire that began in the early evening of Monday, sending thick clouds of smoke over the capital for several hours.
At the beginning of last week the far-right politician Marine Le Pen was convicted of embezzling European Parliament funds and immediately banned from running for public office for five years, ruling her out of the 2027 presidential contest. Her party, Rassemblement National, yesterday held a public protest against the court's ruling. In between there have been all kinds of wild claims that this judicial decision was somehow undermining democracy. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Antton Rouget and Ellen Salvi argue that these post-verdict attacks on the very idea of justice should not be taken lightly. Across the world, they say, the far-right is stepping up its attempts to tear down democratic checks and balances, and to challenge the rule of law.
The French far-right has framed last week's court verdict against Le Pen as an attack on democracy — but was unable to attract a large crowd to a rally of support on Sunday.
A biopic partly filmed in Tunisia about the anti-racist and anti-colonial activist Frantz Fanon has just been released in France to mark the centenary of the writer's birth. But this anniversary also offers countries in North Africa a chance to rediscover the work of a man who has remained too little known in the region and for too long, despite the fact that he lived in both Tunisia and Algeria. Indeed Fanon, a French psychiatrist born in what was then the French colony of Martinique in the Caribbean, later self-identified as Algerian. Lilia Blaise reports from Tunis on the revival of interest in this major figure in anti-colonial thinking.
In February the French Parliament's upper chamber, the Senate, backed a bill that would ban the wearing of the headscarf in sports competitions. It is a sign of sport has become the latest excuse being used by those in authority to justify a legislative offensive against French women who wear the hijab. Indeed, France's interior minister Bruno Retailleau has made it his battle of choice, and at a public meeting recently he declared “down with the headscarf”. It is an issue that is normally the favoured territory of the far-right. But as Samia Dechir and Marie Turcan argue in this op-ed article, all the latter need do now is grab the popcorn and watch as the government itself goes on the attack.
The shock decision by the court of appeal comes after the far-right icon’s embezzlement conviction on Monday and a 5-year ban on holding public office, which appeared to prevent her running for the presidency in 2027.
The court verdict that has effectively barred far-right leader Marine Le Pen from standing at the 2027 presidential election, preceded by prosecutors’ demands for former president Nicolas Sarkozy to receive a seven-year prison sentence in the Sarkozy-Gaddafi Libyan funding trial, have one thing in common. Within the space of a few days both pronouncements provoked unbridled populist rhetoric railing against the rule of law. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Fabrice Arfi argues that beneath this outcry there lies a deep longing for the return of privileges and for the end of equality before the law.
The French far-right politician spoke out on television after being found guilty on Monday of embezzling EU funds and being barred from standing in an election for five years, with immediate effect.
On March 31st a court in Paris found far-right leader Marine Le Pen guilty of the embezzlement of European funds and banned her from public office for five years. This rules her out of standing at the 2027 presidential elections in France. She was also sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended and given a 100,000-euro fine. Marine Le Pen's tough sentence has plunged her far-right Rassemblement National party into a state of panic, amid calls for an uprising, the condemnation of a “dictatorship of judges” and wider fears for the future, given that its natural candidate will now probably not be able to run in 2027. And while both the Right and far-right have fiercely attacked the judges, the radical-left La France Insoumise was the only leftwing party to oppose the principle of the political ban being enforced immediately without waiting for the outcome of any appeal. Youmni Kezzouf reports.
