EU president Ursula von der Leyen announces Mercosur trade accord, delighting her fellow Germans but infuriating France which calls the deal unacceptable.
The president accused Macron accused the French far right and hard left of collaborating in an "anti-republican front" to bring Michel Barnier's government down.
President Macron is expected to move fast to name a replacement for Michel Barnier whose administration was toppled in a no confidence vote on Wednesday.
The collapse of Michel Barnier's administration on Wednesday night after a no-confidence vote has repercussions that spread beyond France itself. For example, the political crisis in Paris further complicates the European Union’s efforts to formulate a response to Donald Trump’s imminent return to power in the United States. And it also comes as negotiations on the EU-Mercosur trade agreement – which is deeply unpopular with French farmers – look as if they could be concluded by the end of this week. Mediapart's Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant reports.
A vote of no confidence brought down prime minister Michel Barnier’s short-lived administration last night, something that has only happened once before under France' Fifth Republic, and that was in 1962. Yet the vote – backed by 331 French MPs - will not persuade President Emmanuel Macron to change course. On the contrary, says Mediapart's political correspondent Ilyes Ramdani, the head of state is now actively seeking solutions from among his most loyal supporters about how to hold on until the summer when fresh parliamentary elections can be held.
The far-right leader has helped trigger France's second political crisis in six months and it's a decision that may come back to haunt her say politicians and analysts.
After using a decree to push through parliament a social security budget bill without a vote by MPs, French Prime Minister Michel Barnier and his minority government now face a vote of no-confidence on Wednesday which, supported by the far-right and radical-left, is most likely to succeed.
A prolific actor who was directed by Jacques Audiard and Steven Spielberg, who starred in the Oscar-nominated A Prophet, died on Sunday at his home in the Paris suburb of Ville-d'Avray after a long illness.
The stuffed beast, a star of the court of Louis XV after arriving in France in 1770, is on show at London's Science Museum, whose curator Glyn Morgan said photos do not show 'just how impressive and characterful it is'.
Chad has put an end to the longtime military alliance with France, the former colonial ruler of the country, effectively ending France’s military influence in the troubled stretch of countries below the Sahara known as the Sahel after similar moves by Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.
By hiding the closeness of its relationship with the US government, the world’s largest consortium of investigative journalism, the OCCRP, has played into the hands of the planet’s worst dictators, like Vladimir Putin, who sees a foreign agent behind any journalist who disturbs his regime’s status quo, writes Fabrice Arfi in this op-ed article.
Charles Kushner, father of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and a real-estate developer who pleaded guilty to federal charges of tax evasion, campaign finance offences and witness tampering before being pardoned during Trump's first term in office, has been chosen by the US president-elect to be the next US ambassador to France.
According to news agency reports, French President Emmanuel Macron has sent a letter to his Senagalese counterpart Bassirou Diomaye Faye saying 'France must recognise that [...] the confrontation between soldiers and riflemen who demanded their full legitimate wages be paid, triggered a chain of events that resulted in a massacre' of African infantrymen who served for France in WWII.
