In recent months politicians and some senior legal figures in France have spoken out against the practice of encryption to protect people's data, emails and mobile phone calls, claiming it hampers investigations into crime and above all terrorism. Mediapart can reveal that a policy to force companies to leave so-called “backdoors” in their software to enable the security forces to bypass encryption was close to being adopted by the French government. But the data privacy watchdog in France warns that such measures would put people's computer security at even greater risk at a time of an increasing number of cyber threats. Jérôme Hourdeaux reports.
The French government was initially enthusiastic about the free trade agreement being negotiated between the European Union and the United States. However in recent months Paris, and in particular overseas trade minister Matthias Fekl, has taken a tougher line on the so-called TAFTA deal. Talks on the agreement resume in New York on Monday April 25th, while the day before President Barack Obama will raise the issue with German chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. But as Ludovic Lamant reports, the chances of a deal being struck before the end of Obama's term of office look increasingly remote.
The massacres in Paris on November 13th last year and the attacks in Brussels on March 22nd have focused attention on Islamic State. Yet the threat from Al Qaeda terrorism has not gone away. Indeed, French intelligence agencies fear that the older terrorist movement may be planning to up the stakes with an attack on France in a bid to restore its flagging reputation in relation to its jihadist rival. Matthieu Suc reports.
This week the knives were sharpening in the battle between rivals to become the 2017 presidential election candidate for the French conservative opposition party Les Républicains, with latest contenders bringing the total to ten. Defying earlier predictions, the current clear favourite, ahead of primaries to be held in the autumn, is Alain Juppé, the 70-year-old former prime minister whose principal rival is his party's leader, Nicolas Sarkozy. Mediapart political correspondent Ellen Salvi examines the striking resemblance of Juppé’s successful campaign to that of French President François Hollande in his bid to wrestle power from Sarkozy four years ago.
A total of 20 student and youth organisations have called for protests on Wednesday, March 9th against the government's proposed reforms of employment law. Though the formal presentation of the bill has now been postponed pending further discussions with trade unions, ministers still fear the spectre of widespread social mobilisation, of the kind seen ten years ago that sank plans for new workplace contracts. In particular, President François Hollande is afraid the final months of his presidency would be doomed if students take to the streets in large numbers. Lénaïg Bredoux and Faïza Zerouala report on the unpredictability of France's student protests.
On Monday February 29th the prime minister Manuel Valls announced that the government was postponing for two weeks the formal presentation of a new bill reforming employment law. This concession came after days of vociferous opposition to the bill from trade unions, students and many members of France's ruling Socialist Party itself who see the measure as an attack on workers' rights. Mediapart's Lénaïg Bredoux, Rachida El Azzouzi, Mathilde Goanec and Mathieu Magnaudeix analyse how what was intended to be a flagship government reform went so badly wrong.
The former first secretary of the French Socialist Party (PS), Martine Aubry, has launched a ferocious attack on the policies of President François Hollande and his prime minister Manuel Valls. Her trenchant comments in an article in Le Monde – seen by some as a call by Hollande to ditch his prime minister - in turn led to bitter criticism of her stance from government loyalists. It remains unclear where Aubry's initiative will lead. But as Mediapart's Stéphane Alliès reports, it looks as if support for the socialist government could now be in a minority within the Socialist Party itself.
Former French president and now conservative opposition party leader Nicolas Sarkozy was this week placed under investigation – a restrictive legal status one step short of being charged – for his role in the suspected illegal financing of his failed re-election campaign in 2012. Sarkozy is also under investigation for corruption in a separate case, and his hopes of a new bid for the presidency in 2017 now appear seriously damaged. But, as Fabrice Arfi details here, behind Sarkozy’s personal judicial woes are also those of no less than 32 of his close allies who have been either convicted or placed under investigation in a series of cases centring on corruption, money laundering, fraud and influence peddling.
He remains one of the most fascinating and colourful figures in French politics. Arnaud Montebourg was a high-profile figure in the government of President François Hollande, who as economy minister had a very public spat with a US business boss. In August 2014 he quit after disagreeing with the government's policies and went off to work in commerce. In the last 18 months Montebourg has kept a low public profile but has been assiduously meeting key figures and thinkers on the French Left. So is he, as many believe, discreetly preparing a bid for the French presidency in 2017? Lénaïg Bredoux reports.
President François Hollande's socialist government has been at the centre of a political controversy since it announced that convicted dual-national terrorists would be stripped of French nationality. Many of its own supporters on the Left, including senior figures, are bitterly opposed to the idea. Now, as an alternative, some party MPs are suggesting a revival of the old offence of “national unworthiness”, which would entail the citizen concerned losing their civil rights and status, and which was last used at the end of World War II. Mathieu Magnaudeix explains.
