The 76th Cannes Film Festival opened on Tuesday amid controversy over two films presented at the annual cinema event – one marking the return of Johnny Depp, the other dogged by accusations of on-set harassment and abuse – and silence over recent sexual violence allegations against actor Gérard Depardieu. In this co-authored op-ed article, Lénaïg Bredoux and Marine Turchi argue that the festival is a further illustration of how the French cinema industry obstinately continues to resist feminist struggles.
On the Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte, a French overseas territory and département (county), a police operation launched by Paris and codenamed Wuambushu has begun a crackdown against Comoran "illegal immigrants" who face eviction from their shanty town homes and deportation back to the nearby Comoro islands. The decision to launch the roundup is a political monstrosity and the prolongation of a crime, argues Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. While maintaining its sovereignty over Mayotte in flagrant violation of international law, he writes, France is staging a massive expulsion of human beings on the pretext that they are foreigners, whereas they are of the same people as Mayotte’s native population.
President Emmanuel Macron, according to his entourage, said he had “no scruples” about walking over the rights of Parliament by using an article of the French constitution to force his reform of the pensions system through the chamber, which was denied a vote on the legislation because he knew it would be rejected. In this op-ed article, Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel argues that the move shines a clear light on a presidency which, far from acting as a barrage against the far-right, opens up a path for it by accustoming France to its anti-democratic violence and anti-egalitarian ideology.
After France’s Constitutional Council on Friday approved nearly all of President Emmanuel Macron’s legislation to reform the pensions system, notably the raising of the retirement age on full pension rights to 64, the legislation was enacted as law in the early hours of Saturday. In this op-ed analysis of the move, Mediapart’s political affairs correspondent Ellen Salvi sets out why the social and political crisis created by the fiercely contested reform has now also become an institutional one, paving a path in France for future illiberal regimes.
Emmanuel Macron and his supporters – including interior minister Gérald Darmanin – have not learnt the lessons from the president's first term and the fact that, twice in a row, the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen made it through to the second round of a French presidential election, argues Ellen Salvi in this op-ed article. All the while, she says, the government continues to lower the level of public debate, with the far-right being the main beneficiaries.
If one single proof were needed of the justness of the environmental cause, then this is provided by the frenzied repression regularly deployed against it, writes Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. From the anti-nuclear protests at Creys-Malville on the Franco-Swiss border in the 1970s to the recent demonstrations against agricultural water reservoirs at Sainte-Soline in west France, and including the sinking of the 'Rainbow Warrior' in Auckland harbour in 1985 and the anti-dam protests at Sivens in south-west France in 2014, the movement's martyrs have stood up against its opponents in France. These opponents are, he argues, proponents of a calamitous capitalism that is now paving the way for carbo-fascism.
The French government on Thursday announced it will use an article of the constitution that allows it to adopt as legislation its proposed and hotly contested reform of the pensions system without a vote in Parliament. In this op-ed analysis of the move, Mediapart political correspondent Ilyes Ramdani argues that it is not only the latest manifestation of President Emmanuel Macron’s top-down exercise of power, but it may also represent one too many, opening up a profound crisis into which his second and final term in office is now plunged.
The battle against the French government's pension reform is not simply just another protest movement. Three crucial issues are at stake here: social, democratic and civilisational, as shown by the exceptional unity among trade unions opposed to the changes, argues Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. All the more reason, he writes, to put all our energy into supporting this combat.
The brutality, stubbornness and indifference of the French government – as exemplified by its current pension reforms - is exposing the country to deep democratic dangers. A combination of political democracy and economic democracy is the only viable alternative to the breakdown of France's Fifth Republic, argue Mediapart's Fabien Escalona and Romaric Godin in this op-ed article.
The pension changes proposed by President Emmanuel Macron – the fourth reform in twenty years and which in this case will push the retirement age back from 62 to 64 - will leave no one better off. The demonstrators who have taken to the streets on January 19th and January 31st have fully grasped that point, say Mediapart's Stéphane Alliès, Carine Fouteau and Dan Israel in this op-ed article. They argue that the stubbornness shown by the government, which looks set to force the reforms through the French Parliament, represents a danger to democracy.
