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The current pension system was changed in 2010 under President Nicolas Sarkozy, and the change was not without protests. Currently, the age of retirement with a full pension is 62 (raised from 60, the age established by the Mitterrand administration); the required number of years …

On April 3, 2022,  Anne Hidalgo held her last major campaign rally at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris. The first-round election was seven days away.   A number of Socialist Party heavyweights were present, including her campaign manager, Johanna Rolland, mayor of Nantes; David Assouline, …

The first voice is that of Emmanuel Macron, recently re-elected President of France. The second is that of Clémentine Autain, Deputy of the radical Left party La France Insoumise for Seine-Saint-Denis since 2017, member of the commission of Foreign Affairs in the National Assembly. Macron: …

The Socialist Party (PS) faced a dilemma at the approach of the presidential elections of 2022.  Benoît Hamon, the most recent candidate, had left the party in 2017 after getting only 6% of the vote in the first round.   Bernard Cazeneuve, Minister of the …

Review of: Marylou Magal, La BéréZina: Éric Zemmour, Autopsie d’une déroute électorale. Paris: Éditions du Rocher, 2022. The reference to someone’s defeat as their “Waterloo” is, in France. superseded by the term “Bérézina.” It refers to the horrific battle in late November, 1812, during Napoleon’s …

Andréa Kotarac, born in 1989, grew up in Haute Savoie in southern France, an area bordering both Switzerland and Italy.  His father was Serbian and his mother was Iranian.  He studied law and had been an activist for most of his adult life, starting in …

Emmanuel Macron, as everyone knows by now, is determined to pass a retirement bill.  During his first term, the Gilets jaunes movement delayed it for about a year, from late 2018 to late 2019; and when he returned to the issue (accompanied by the usual …

Jacques Sapir is an economist who specializes in Europe, the European Union, and especially in post-USSR Russia. Since the 1990s, he has served as an interpreter of the dramatic changes that have occurred since the collapse of the Soviet Union; he has also been a …

Les Républicains, formerly one of the two dominant parties in France (the other was the rapidly shrinking Socialist party) was pulled together in 2002 from various strands of the Gaullist, sovereignist, neoliberal, and traditionally conservative and Catholic right.  At first designated as UMP (Union for a …

La rentrée marks the start of the school year in France–summer is over, everyone is back from vacation, Paris residents once again outnumber tourists.  It also means the start of the political season.  The political parties are holding their universités d’été, the summer conferences that allow …