French tility giant EDF has dismissed a TV report that it has a secret plan to delay reducing the share of nuclear power in France's energy mix to 50% by 2025, as required by a law passed two years ago, to 2050 instead, describing the suggestion as "malicious rumours".
French economy minister Bruno Le Paire met with his German counterpart Wolfgang Schäuble in Berlin on Monday, when the pair agreed that a working group would be set up to study measures for greater integration of the 19-member eurozone before a planned bilateral summit in July.
France's new prime minister Edouard Philippe, appointed last week by centrist president Emmanuel Macron, previously co-authored two novels of political satire, including one where the narrator explains that 'negotiating with a centrist is like trying to catch an eel in a bowl of olive oil', and how he enjoys fullsome women's breasts which allow 'to put one’s nose into the middle with jubilation'.
Sylvie Goulard, who this weekend made her first public appearance with a visit to troops on security patrols in Paris, said on Saturday she wants to increase joint European defence projects and that 'to achieve this effort, work with Germany will be decisive'.
Judicial sources said a 23-year-old man has been placed under investigation for aiding the gunman who murdered a police officer and wounded two others on the Champs-Elysées avenue last month, after his DNA was found on the weapon used by Karim Cheurfi, who was shot dead by police.
French arms exports in 2016, worth 8.3 billion euros, increased in value by 14% on those in 2015, while imports of weapons saw a five-fold increase year-on-year, according to the French defence ministry's statistical agency, L'Observatoire économique de la défense.
In a visit lasting just a few hours, President Emmanuel Macron on Friday met some of the 4,000 French troops engaged in Mali to fight jihadist forces in the north and the wider Sahel region, pledge that France will continue to defend the West African country and to provide aide for its development.
Unemployment in France fell overall during the first quarter of 2017 to 9.6%, down from 10% in the fourth quarter 2016, with a 1.4% drop in the jobless rate among 15-24-year-olds to 22.3%.
Latest opinion survey shows newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron's fledgling centrist movement Republic on the Move, along with its centre-right allies, is gaining public voting intentions for June's parliamentary elections when it will stand its first electoral test.
Security was tight and omnipresent on the Cannes red carpet as the 70th edition of the film festival opened on Wednesday night with multiple ticket checks and a metal detector scan before guests were allowed near the red carpet, as the near two-week prestigious cinema festival opened with Arnaud Desplechin's film Ismael's Ghosts.
