After a delay of 26 days, on Friday May 20th Emmanuel Macron finally appointed the 27 members of the new government under recently-installed prime minister Élisabeth Borne. As Ilyes Ramdani reports, its composition is strikingly similar to the old government and is still anchored firmly to the right. Historian Pap Ndiaye, who was a surprise appointment as minister of education, represents something of an anomaly alongside the rest of the ministerial team.
The mobile phones of five French government ministers were targeted by the Pegasus spyware sold to states worldwide by Israeli surveillance technology firm NSO Group, Mediapart can reveal. The presence of “markers” left by the spyware were discovered by an official French probe involving technical analyses of the devices. The development follows on revelations, first published in July, which found evidence that the surveillance tool was notably employed by NSO clients around the globe to target journalists, including two from Mediapart, politicians and regime opponents. Fabrice Arfi and Ellen Salvi report.
France's Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, on Wednesday fined the government 10 milion euros for its failure to take appropriate measures to combat air pollution which, according to some estimates, causes around 40,000 premature deaths every year.
The report also said Paris bore "heavy and overwhelming responsibilities" over the 1994 Rwanda genocide, but it found no evidence of French complicity.
The new French government of Prime Minister Jean Castex, who replaced Édouard Philippe on Friday after the latter's three years in the job, was announced on Monday evening when it emerged that heavyweights from the outgoing cabinet remain in place while others were largely reshuffled, with the notable exceptions of the arrival of controversial lawyer Éric Dupond-Moretti as justice minister and Roselyne Bachelot, a former conservative sports minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, as culture minister.
Four French NGOs, including Greenpeace France and Oxfam France, have filed a lawsuit against the French government accusing it of failing to act upon its environmental obligations, a move that was backed by 2.1 million signatures in an online petition.
A much-awaited French government reshuffle, finally prompted by the resignation of interior minister Gérard Collomb but which followed a string of political upsets for President Emmanuel Macron this summer, saw the appointments on Tuesday of five new ministers, including Macron's party boss and former socialist Christophe Castaner to replace Collomb, and a former conservative filling the departure of scandal-hit culture minister Françoise Nyssen.
Fears that foreign-based messaging apps, including Facebook’s WhatsApp and Telegram – a favourite of President Emmanuel Macron – are open to security breaches have prompted the French government to create its own encrypted messenger service which will be the only system for officials to use by this summer.
France's Socialist Party has moved to expel Olivier Dussopt, a 39-year-old specialist in regional affairs, after he was made junior minister in the public accounts ministry led by former conservative Les Républicains party member Gérard Darmanin, who Dussopt had recently had fierce exchanges with in parliament, in a minor reshuffle of centrist President Emmanuel Macron's government.
Actionnaires directs et indirects : Société pour l’Indépendance de Mediapart, Fonds pour une Presse Libre, Association pour le droit de savoir
Rédaction et administration : 127 avenue Ledru-Rollin, 75011 Paris
Courriel : contact@mediapart.fr
Téléphone : + 33 (0) 1 44 68 99 08
Propriétaire, éditeur, imprimeur : Société Editrice de Mediapart
Abonnement : pour toute information, question ou conseil, le service abonnés de Mediapart peut être contacté par courriel à l’adresse : serviceabonnement@mediapart.fr ou par courrier à l'adresse : Service abonnés Mediapart, 11 place Charles de Gaulle 86000 Poitiers. Vous pouvez également adresser vos courriers à Société Editrice de Mediapart, 127 avenue Ledru-Rollin, 75011 Paris.
