Analyses

French president François Hollande has made clear that France will join the US in military strikes against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, dismissing calls for a vote of approval beforehand in parliament. As illustrated in yesterday’s heated debate in the lower house, the National Assembly, political and public opinion is deeply divided, both over the legality and consequences of the planned strikes. Lénaïg Bredoux and Caroline Donati have talked to senior French officials and experts close to the Syrian dossier, many of whom agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity, to find out why Hollande appears to have been finally wrongfooted amid a rushed and chaotic final denouement to a crisis of more than two years, and which one government advisor says is down to “a series of balls-ups”.

After days of hesitation, the United States finally seems poised to intervene militarily following Syria's use of chemical weapons against its own people. But until then, faced with the enduring crises in Syria and Egypt, the White House had sometimes given the impression that the entire administration was on its summer holiday. More generally, during the first five years of his presidency Barack Obama has shown indecision and muddle in his handling of international issues. To the point, argues Thomas Cantaloube, that the United States is in danger of slipping towards insignificance on the world stage. 

An official French citizens’ rights watchdog has launched an investigation into allegedly discriminatory recruitment practices by fashionable US clothes retail chain Abercrombie & Fitch, which is accused of selecting only physically attractive people as sales staff for its French stores. As Michaël Hajdenberg reports, the affair highlights a problem that several studies show affects vast numbers of people on the job market, whose professional opportunities are daily compromised by a secret discrimination over their weight, size or blemishes.

The power of French presidents to nominate the heads of the country’s state-funded television channels and radio stations is to be removed under new legislation aimed at guaranteeing the independence of France’s publicly-owned broadcast media. But while the new law, expected to be approved by parliament and enacted before the end of the year, does away with the excesses of political interference introduced under the previous presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, it is hardly the clean sweep that the government proclaims. Dan Israel outlines the bill’s proposals and weighs the arguments for and against.  

The right-wing UMP has won the country's most recent parliamentary by-election. But the party who have most to celebrate are the far-right Front national whose candidate came close to winning a seat that was once a socialist stronghold, picking up a massive 7,000 votes between the first and second rounds of voting. The FN's strong showing has now cast doubt over the Socialist Party's policy of supporting more moderate right-wing candidates when they are in head-to-head electoral contests with far-right politicians, forming what is known as a 'republican front'. Mathieu Magnaudeix, Marine Turchi and Stéphane Alliès report on the fallout from a high-profile campaign and on the future of such election pacts in the future.

Judge Jean-Michel Gentil has been accused of a 'major conflict of interest' and lack of impartiality after it emerged that one of the medical experts he used in the Bettencourt investigation is a friend of his. The disclosure, which has been given massive media coverage, follows the anonymous death threats and vitriolic attacks from right-wing politicians that greeted his decision to put former president Nicolas Sarkozy under formal investigation for allegedly exploiting the mental frailty of billionaire Liliane Bettencourt. But, as Mediapart's legal affairs expert Michel Deléan explains, this is simply the latest in a catalogue of attacks on judges who dare to turn the spotlight on powerful political and business interests.

European leaders met this week at a summit intended to decide upon aggressive policies to tackle tax evasion, but the results were far from conclusive, not least because of continuing opposition from Austria and Luxembourg on introducing a yearly automatic exchange of bank account information between member states. Mediapart’s Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant reports on the outcome of Wednesday’s talks, and examines whether the European Union is truly capable of acting as the umbrella organisation to halt a tax drain that is estimated to cost its members a combined 1 trillion euros per year.

One year on, and the Hollande presidency is widely regarded as having almost completely failed. Right through the corridors of power the same question is being asked: why isn't it working? In a bid to find the answer, Mediapart provides a guided tour of each of the separate institutions that makes up the socialist administration which took office on 15th May 2012. Lénaïg Bredoux and Mathieu Magnaudeix report.

France's Fifth Republic is reeling after the impact of the Cahuzac scandal. As François Hollande becomes isolated and shuts himself away inside an out-of-date presidential system that has always been fatal for the Left, the Right has been underlining its drift towards extremism, calling for a 'new 1958'. In other words, a coup d'état. Mediapart's Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel says it is now up to the people to produce the boldness that the country's leaders lack; to force a much-needed and democratic refounding of the Republic.