French carmaking group PSA has announced it is to abandon a plan to bring more than 500 workers from one of its sites in Poland to help out with re-starting production at a commercial vehicle plant in northern France, after sharp criticism that it should have turned to the local labour force instead.
Visiting Poland this week, French President Emmanuel Macron slammed the country’s government over its moves to take control of the judiciary, denouncing a “negation of European political principles”. In a tit-for-tat move, Polish members of the European Parliament launched a petition denouncing French police violence in recent demonstrations as “unjustified brutality against protestors exercising their civil rights”. The row has escalated through the week, and returned the spotlight to crowd policing methods in France, already the subject of outspoken concern from international bodies, and which over the past year have left hundreds injured, many seriously. Ellen Salvi reports.
Following talks in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda, French President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped his visit 'will mark a real turning point' in bilateral relations because following Brexit 'fragility and doubt' had gained the EU, in a move to appease previously strained ties with Poland's right wing populist government over judicial reforms, climate goals and criticism of the bloc's powers.
An exhibition in Paris reveals Poland's now forgotten colonial ambitions in the 1930s. In doing so, it makes a link between past Polish attitudes to colonies and other peoples and the racist reflexes of some governments in Central and Eastern Europe today. Ludovic Lamant reports.
At a meeting of European Union (EU) ministers on Tuesday, France and Germany said they were concerned over reforms of the Polish judicial system, which are regarded as politically intimidating for the country's courts and a threat to their independence, voicing their support for EU Commission infringement procedures which could in theory result in Poland losing its EU voting rights.
The French ambassador to Poland, Pierre Levy, has said he was 'shocked' at comments made by Polish foreign minister Jacek Czaputowicz in which he said recent social unrest in France and the slowdown of President Emmanuel Macron's timetable of reforms had made the country 'the sick man of Europe, dragging Europe down'.
After furious reaction from France to a last-minute decision by Poland not to buy 50 Airbus-built helicopters, the Polish deputy defence minister slammed Paris for disinviting Poland from an arms fair and claimed his country taught the French how to use cutlery.
After a bitter dispute lasting more than a week, the giant French dairy group Lactalis has finally agreed to pay its dairy farmers higher prices for their milk. However, the anger of the protests has once again highlighted the desperate plight of many dairy farmers in France. As Laurent Geslin reports, an entire way of life is in danger of disappearing as smaller-scale farmers find it increasingly hard to make a living.
