This week the knives were sharpening in the battle between rivals to become the 2017 presidential election candidate for the French conservative opposition party Les Républicains, with latest contenders bringing the total to ten. Defying earlier predictions, the current clear favourite, ahead of primaries to be held in the autumn, is Alain Juppé, the 70-year-old former prime minister whose principal rival is his party's leader, Nicolas Sarkozy. Mediapart political correspondent Ellen Salvi examines the striking resemblance of Juppé’s successful campaign to that of French President François Hollande in his bid to wrestle power from Sarkozy four years ago.
A total of 20 student and youth organisations have called for protests on Wednesday, March 9th against the government's proposed reforms of employment law. Though the formal presentation of the bill has now been postponed pending further discussions with trade unions, ministers still fear the spectre of widespread social mobilisation, of the kind seen ten years ago that sank plans for new workplace contracts. In particular, President François Hollande is afraid the final months of his presidency would be doomed if students take to the streets in large numbers. Lénaïg Bredoux and Faïza Zerouala report on the unpredictability of France's student protests.
On Monday February 29th the prime minister Manuel Valls announced that the government was postponing for two weeks the formal presentation of a new bill reforming employment law. This concession came after days of vociferous opposition to the bill from trade unions, students and many members of France's ruling Socialist Party itself who see the measure as an attack on workers' rights. Mediapart's Lénaïg Bredoux, Rachida El Azzouzi, Mathilde Goanec and Mathieu Magnaudeix analyse how what was intended to be a flagship government reform went so badly wrong.
The French state is currently appealing to the highest court in the country after five identity checks carried out by police were judged discriminatory because they were based on people's appearance. Mediapart has now seen the legal arguments made by state lawyers who argue that in some circumstances it can be justifiable for police to target black and North Africans for such searches. Thus despite domestic and international jurisprudence, writes Michaël Hajdenberg, the French state appears to be condoning the practice of racial profiling.
The former first secretary of the French Socialist Party (PS), Martine Aubry, has launched a ferocious attack on the policies of President François Hollande and his prime minister Manuel Valls. Her trenchant comments in an article in Le Monde – seen by some as a call by Hollande to ditch his prime minister - in turn led to bitter criticism of her stance from government loyalists. It remains unclear where Aubry's initiative will lead. But as Mediapart's Stéphane Alliès reports, it looks as if support for the socialist government could now be in a minority within the Socialist Party itself.
