Gérald Darmanin

After environmentalists protested over plans by farmers in western France to build a large irrigation reservoir, interior minister Gérald Darmanin likened some of the demonstrators to “ecoterrorists”. In doing so, say Mathieu Dejean and Fabien Escalona in this op-ed article, the minister was spouting paranoid fantasies while ignoring warnings about whether the planet can remain habitable. At the same time, they write, the country's main green party – which should be setting the political agenda - remains bogged down in internal squabbles.

France’s Council of State has ruled against a lower court’s suspension of an expulsion order against imam Hassan Iquioussen for propagating anti-Semitism and misogyny and being an apologist for terrorism. Immediately after the ruling, which capped a month-long legal battle, police were sent to arrest Iquioussen at his home in north-east France but the 58-year-old imam had already disappeared. Camille Polloni reports.

In a legal battle that began in July, France’s Council of State is to rule early next week on the legality of interior minister Gérald Darmanin’s order for the expulsion to Morocco of imam Hassan Iquioussen, accused of promoting anti-Semitism and opposition to gender equality, and acting as an apologist for terrorism. Mediapart can reveal that the high-profile, hardline interior minister in fact once enjoyed cordial relations with the imam when he sought to woo Muslim voters while campaigning for election as mayor of the town of Tourcoing, and when Iquioussen’s anti-Semitic diatribes were already known. Lou Syrah reports.

The showcase event of European football, the final of the Champions League, was marred by numerous incidents at the Stade de France in the northern suburbs of Paris on Saturday night. Hundreds of Liverpool fans were 'kettled', blocked at the entrance to the stadium, and then tear or pepper gassed by police officers before the club's match with Real Madrid. As Ilyes Ramdani writes in this opinion article, this failure comes on the back of years spent by the French public authorities pursuing a repressive, incompetent and often violent approach to maintaining order at public events.

For months the French government has continually raised concerns about what it sees as the dangers of “Islamic separatism” in the country and has brought in legislation to tackle it. Yet when in the wake of a major report on child sex abuse in the French Catholic Church a senior bishop suggested that the secrets of the confessional were stronger than the “Republic's laws” there was at first a deafening silence from government ministers. This reluctance to comment came on top of the government's clear embarrassment at the publication of the sex abuse report itself, a document which produced shocking figures on the extent of the scandal in the church. Ellen Salvi reports.