Contemporary France. News, Politics, Films, Books
Macron is heading for a 2022 election for another five year term. He believes he has eighteen months to accomplish something solid before the campaign takes over. His agenda seems stalled. His party was just walloped in the nationwide municipal elections on June 28. So …
The ministers of the French government are housed in the great hôtels of Paris, the 18th century residences built by the nobility to escape from the king’s oppressive presence in Versailles. They are lavish homes, with separate wings that lend themselves to a division of …
Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, from Shutterstock.com There have been world-wide protests about the death of George Floyd, but in France these protests also have a local connection. In 1986 Malik Oussekine, a 22-year-old student, was beaten to death by police. Thirty years later, in 2016, Adama Traoré, …
On May 18, 2020, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, in a joint press conference, announced a plan to mitigate the enormous debts and economic losses suffered by European nations in fighting COVID-19, and thus to guarantee the strength of the eurozone and its members. What …
French prosecutors announced on Monday, May 11, 2020, that they have opened an investigation into former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing on the charge of sexual assault (agression sexuelle), an action that had allegedly occurred on December 18, 2018. The complainant is reporter Ann-Kathrin Stracke of …
Trick question: With what country does France share its longest land border? Answer: Brazil; 800 kilometers. French Guiana (Guyane française) is one of the remnants of France’s first colonial empire (those territories acquired before the French Revolution), and it chose to remain with France after …
On May 14, 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (known as DSK), powerful head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was taken into custody at JFK just before his return to Paris. An experienced and popular leader of the Socialist Party in France, he had been about to …
“A paradox: the candidate designated by the socialist primary did not want to be the candidate of the socialists, but rather of an alternative alliance of the left wing of the Socialist Party and the Ecologists.” This perhaps sounds like a thinly disguised parable about …
Emmanuel Macron was not entirely to blame for the Socialist Party’s collapse in the 2017 elections. Indeed, one could argue that the Socialist Party had been digging a hole for itself since the end of François Mitterand’s term in 1995. Further, the Socialist Party had …
