Marlène Schiappa

Months after the 2020 murder of history and geographer teacher Samuel Paty by a radicalised youth, junior minister Marlène Schiappa set up the Fonds Marianne to counter extremism and 'defend Republican values'. This government-funded body has since paid out just over two million euros to 17 different associations. But investigations by the media, including Mediapart, have raised question marks over two of the associations who received large sums from the fund and over the way this money was used. One in particular, Reconstruire le Commun, went on to publish videos attacking opponents of President Emmanuel Macron during the 2022 elections. And Mediapart can reveal that there are fresh questions today over the profile of some of those who took part in that charity's videos. Meanwhile, opposition politicians are calling for a Parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which has also been referred to the prosecution authorities. Antton Rouget and Ellen Salvi report.

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.

The word 'Republican' has a hugely positive place in the French collective memory. But recently the concept has come to be used – and abused - as a form of political shorthand to tell people to obey the rules. Mediapart's Fabien Escalona talks to French academics about the shifting meaning of the concept and how it is now cited more to protect existing privileges rather than to extend safeguards and rights to new groups.

According to the French interior ministry, 121 women died in 2018 in incidents of domestic violence. Already this year, 92 women in France have been murdered at the hands of their husbands, former spouses or companions, according to records compiled by a French feminist association, while women’s support groups denounce inadequate legal protection afforded to domestic violence victims. Sophie Boutboul reports on the emblematic case of a mother-of-two, separated from her former partner against whom she has filed a complaint for violence, and who says she fears so much that she has moved house three times in two years. Despite her detailed complaints, a previous protection order was lifted by a judge last month, along with the secrecy of her home address.