The European Commission’s incoming president, centre-right politician Jean-Claude Juncker, caused surprise this summer when he pledged his support for a continent-wide minimum wage. Juncker, who will take up his post in November, has not yet detailed the potentially complicated practical framework for applying the minimum wage, a move which runs against the tide of the blanket austerity policies until now championed by Brussels. While Juncker faces numerous obstacles to succeed with the scheme, not least from European treaty texts, the idea that raising low incomes would be beneficial to economies appears to be gaining support even from the most unexpected quarters. Mediapart’s Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant reports on the arguments for and against, and in just what form a pan-European minimum wage might finally see the light of day.
When François Hollande was elected head of state in May 2012, General Benoît Puga expected to be removed from the powerful position as chief military advisor to the French president that he had held under Nicolas Sarkozy. Instead Puga was kept on, and has even seen his influence grow following French military interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic. “He's taking control of the president's brain,” is the view of some at the ministry of defence. Increasingly, Puga's role at the Elysée Palace is causing annoyance among MPs from the ruling Socialist Party, not least because of the general's known right-wing sympathies. In the meantime, argues Thomas Cantaloube, Puga's continuing presence at the heart of government tells us a great deal about the Sarkozy years, the way Hollande exercises power and about the fawning and secret nature of this five-star general himself.
The French government’s environment and energy minister Ségolène Royal has just unveiled her plans for what is known as “energy transition” - the move to a society which uses less energy and which switches from fossil and nuclear fuel to renewables. This long-awaited new law, which will be debated by the French Parliament in the autumn, has been touted as one of the flagship measures of President François Hollande's five-year term of office. But as Mediapart's environment correspondent Jade Lindgaard and Dan Israel report, the proposals, while regarded as a step in the right direction, have been widely described as timid and lacking in ambition.
Since François Hollande personally redrew the map of France in June as part of his local government reforms, the shape of the country's regions have been amended several times. However, French MPs recently voted to approve the latest version of the regional boundary changes, which now seems likely to form the new face of France. Mediapart has examined this regional structure, which reduces the number of regions from the current 22 to 13, to see what impact it will have on demographics, economic growth and employment. It seems clear that one result of the reforms will be to increase the wealth of already well-off regions and leave isolated areas languishing even further behind. Yannick Sanchez reports.
Last month BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, was fined 8.8 billion dollars after reaching a settlement with the US justice system in which it pleaded guilty to violating US economic sanctions against several countries, including Iran and Syria and Sudan. The guilty plea is crucial for the bank’s shareholders for it could allow them to begin legal proceedings against those responsible for incurring the fine, a record in such prosecutions in the US. As Mediapart economic affairs writer Philippe Riès details in this analysis of the potential case against BNP Paribas senior management, all eyes are now on the bank’s principal shareholder – the Belgian state.
Nothing has gone to plan in the two military campaigns launched last year by French President François Hollande in Mali and the Central African Republic. In-depth reports by the United Nations, the French parliament and various NGOs detail the huge and quite different problems now faced in both countries, which have resulted in the French army becoming bogged down in its war-torn former colonies. Paris has now announced a new "counter-terrorist" offensive, this time against jihadist groups in the Sahel region of Northern Africa. As Hollande prepares to visit three African countries this week to discuss the move, Mediapart's editor François Bonnet analyses how France has lost its way amid missions that were initially presented as short-term and which now promise the long haul with no exit in sight.
Debts of nearly 80 million euros, a party leader who had to step down over an election funding scandal, warring factions, public attacks, leaked allegations that senior party figures and their relatives have been milking its finances for their own benefit and continuing scandals surrounding its talismanic figure Nicolas Sarkozy... France's main opposition party the UMP seems on the brink of a political abyss. Indeed, one senior figure in it has claimed that the right-wing party is “already dead”. Mathilde Mathieu, Ellen Salvi and Marine Turchi report on a party crisis that shows no sign of abating and could end in its destruction.
On Monday July 7th the French government began the third of its so-called 'social conferences' in which employer and worker representatives debate plans to tackle the country’s social and economic problems. At stake this time is President François Hollande's much-vaunted but controversial 'Responsibility Pact' aimed at giving a 40-billion-euro incentive to the country's bosses to hire staff and thus cut the jobless total. Here Mediapart looks at the main economic and social indicators which all illustrate the challenges faced by the government; rising unemployment, growing poverty and financial hardship, and the destruction of industrial jobs. Yannick Sanchez and Thomas Saint-Cricq report.
The new watchdog overseeing the probity of France's elected representatives and officials has just published a report on the property and financial interests of government ministers. As expected the foreign minister Laurent Fabius came out top in the net worth stakes, followed by parliamentary relations minister Jean-Marie Le Guen who was obliged by the watchdog to re-evaluate upwards the value of his property, while Europe minister Harlem Désir emerges as the least well-off member of the government. But while the publication of the list is a welcome step towards transparency in public life after the débâcle of the Jérome Cahuzac affair, there are still some puzzling gaps and omissions on the list.
Just a few weeks ago the chief executive of French company Alstom suggested that the group had no alternative but to sell its energy section outright to American firm General Electric. But then the economy minister Arnaud Montebourg stepped into the fray and brokered a deal, agreed last weekend, that offers considerably better prospects for one of France's flagship companies. And in doing so, says Martine Orange, the minister has not only scored a personal political victory, he has also shown that the state is not always powerless to intervene on the industrial landscape.
