Mediapart has analysed the 400 pages of the court judgement that saw ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, his former senior aides Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux, middleman Alexandre Djouhri and others convicted in the Libyan funding case on September 25th. Once set out, the facts and the law show a clarity that has got lost amid the chaotic political and media reaction, which has been both false and overblown.
On September 8th the government of François Bayrou looks set to be toppled in a vote of confidence that the prime minister himself has called. Since his appointment at the end of December 2024, Bayrou’s government has obviously struggled because of its lack of an overall majority in the National Assembly, but it has nonetheless clearly pursued a liberal and conservative path. Here, members of Mediapart's editorial team look back at the nine months of an administration whose time in office has been marked by environmental setbacks and by its endorsement of the anti-immigration line espoused by the rightwing Les Républicains party.
Following the surprise announcement by French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Monday (photo) that he will submit his government to a confidence vote in France’s hung parliament on September 8th, which several opposition parties have announced they will reject, his fate now appears sealed after less than nine months in office. As Pauline Graulle reports, the parties of the Left and Right are now preparing for the post-Bayrou period, with the looming possibility of new snap parliamentary elections amid the deepening political chaos.
Last weekend the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen flew to Scotland where she met President Donald Trump to discuss and ultimately agree on a trade deal between the European Union and the United States. But no sooner had the pair shaken hands on the agreement than the entire French political class slammed the deal, with government ministers also making clear their dismay. Yet for the French executive as a whole, this “deal” raised even more awkward questions: for it reveals Paris's diminishing influence on the European stage. Ilyes Ramdani reports.
The French president has announced that Paris will formally recognise the state of Palestine during the United Nations General Assembly in September. After long waiting for backing from both Western and Arab allies, the French head of state has now decided to go it alone. As Mediapart's political correspondent Ilyes Ramdani reports, the impact of this decision - which has already been angrily condemned in Tel Aviv and criticised in the United States - will largely depend on Paris’s ability to stand firm against Israeli pressure.
Presenting the key features of the government’s planned draft legislation for the 2026 budget on Tuesday, French Prime Minister François Bayrou adopted a grim, alarmist style, warning that the country was in “mortal danger” at this “critical moment”, his measures representing a “last stop before the cliff” and the “crushing of France by debt”, justifying budget cuts totalling a massive 44 billion euros. Mathias Thépot reports.
The war declared on Iran by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has completely changed the stance of French diplomacy. A planned conference in New York that would have highlighted France's position on events in Gaza and the wider Palestinian situation was postponed, and French recognition of the state of Palestine currently seems to be on hold once more. Once again, Paris is back to showing public support for Israel. Mediapart's Ilyes Ramdani analyses the impact of the Israeli air strikes on the French president's Middle East diplomacy.
French professional football, and in particular the top-level Ligue 1, is having to confront massive financial problems as the domestic season comes to an end. Indeed, from the collapse of a seemingly-lucrative deal with media rights company Mediapro to the Faustian pact later signed with Jersey-based private equity fund CVC, top-flight club football in France has completely lost its way in the space of just a few years. The root cause, as Mathias Thépot explains here, is that the game has become blinded by delusions of grandeur and undermined by a shaky economic model, leading to financial shortfalls which some of the weaker French clubs may struggle to survive.
In a landslide result, hardline French interior minister Bruno Retailleau was on Sunday elected as the new leader of the conservative party Les Républicains (LR), once a party of government but which has over recent years entered into a spiral of decline. Retailleau, 64, a senator largely unknown to the wider public before entering government last September, now has the task of rebuilding the party, with his eye on the presidential elections due in 2027. In this analysis of Retailleau’s prospects, Ilyes Ramdani considers the many scenarios for the LR’s future, including as kingmaker for the centre- or far-right in France’s increasingly fractured political landscape.
On April 25th a young Muslim worshipper, Aboubakar Cissé, was stabbed to death in a mosque in the town of La Grand-Combe in the south of France. The suspect in the case was arrested after fleeing to Italy. Since the murder, the French government – criticised for its slow initial reaction to the killing - has struggled to offer any political response beyond formulaic references to “universalism” and Republican values. As Ilyes Ramdani reports, this is down to the failure by Emmanuel Macron and his allies over his two terms of office to grapple with the issues of racism and discrimination.
