Category Archives: France

Macron summons parties for crunch meeting in frantic effort to appoint PM

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All parties except National Rally and La France Insoumise called on by president to show ‘collective responsibility’

Emmanuel Macron has summoned the leaders of several political parties to his office to demand they show “collective responsibility” as he attempts to appoint a new prime minister amid a deepening political crisis.

All political parties except Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which is the biggest single opposition party, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftwing La France Insoumise were called to the meeting at the presidential palace before Macron’s self-imposed deadline to name a new prime minister by Friday night.

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Outgoing French PM says ‘path still exists’ to avoid snap elections

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Sébastien Lecornu says majority of MPs willing to seek agreement on budget and avoid further instability

France’s caretaker prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has said a majority of MPs “rejects the idea” of snap elections and that “a path still exists” that should allow Emmanuel Macron to appoint a new premier within 48 hours.

“Several groups are willing to seek agreement on a budget” for 2026, Lecornu told France 2 public television on Wednesday, and were making clear their “conditions”. Talks would be difficult, he said, but “the prospect of a dissolution [of parliament] is fading”.

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Macron under pressure to call snap parliamentary elections or resign

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French president’s former allies join opponents in demanding he act to end a spiralling political crisis

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is under intense pressure to call snap parliamentary elections or resign as former allies join his opponents in demanding he act to end a spiralling political crisis in the EU’s second biggest economy.

Macron’s first prime minister on Tuesday urged the president to step down amid mounting frustration even within the president’s own camp over one of the worst spells of political chaos in France since the foundation of its Fifth Republic in 1958.

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George Clooney says his children have a ‘much better life’ being raised in France than LA

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The actor said that their French farm will be free of paparazzi, teach them self-sufficiency and let them see his handyman skills, such as fixing the coffee machine

George Clooney has said that his decision to base himself in France was informed by the desire to give his children a better start in life than if they had remained in the US.

The actor, 64, who has eight-year-old twins, Ella and Alexander, with his wife, the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, gave a lengthy interview to US Esquire magazine while staying at his Italian villa on Lake Como.

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France is in crisis but bond markets leave other governments at risk of meltdown too

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Investors rattled by resignation of French PM but country is not alone in trying to grapple with political maths

Sébastien Lecornu’s abrupt resignation as the French prime minister on Monday after less than a month in the role marked the latest clash between France’s stretched public finances and its polarised politics.

Lecornu was the latest prime minister to try and fail to cobble together a package of spending cuts and tax rises that would pass muster in a parliament without a clear majority, and contain mounting bond market pressures.

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Lecornu bemoans lack of compromise across political spectrum as he resigns as French PM – Europe live

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Departure after less than a month follows fierce criticism of Macron’s new cabinet

Lecornu’s resignation means that Macron has three possible courses of action and all of them are hazardous, notes Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group.

In an analyst note, Rahman writes:

He can appoint a new prime minister, possibly a senior non-political figure or technocrat, to try to push through a budget for next year to cut France’s ballooning budget deficit.

He can call a new parliamentary election.

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René Magritte’s ‘superstar of surrealism’ to go on sale in Paris

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La Magie Noire, bought by family of wartime resistance heroine 90 years ago, expected to fetch more than €7m

A painting by the surrealist artist René Magritte that has been held in a private collection for more than 90 years will go on sale later this month.

La Magie Noire was bought by the family of the second world war resistance heroine Suzanne Spaak, who were Magritte’s benefactors at a time when he was struggling financially and had failed to sell a single work for two years.

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Sarah Burton turns up the glamour volume at Givenchy in Paris

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Spiritual home of Audrey Hepburn re-establishes itself as serious player in red carpet dressing

On the very same day as Taylor Swift, Sarah Burton entered her Showgirl era. For her second outing as Givenchy designer, Burton turned up the volume with collars dripping rhinestones over collarbones, luscious peach maribou feathers, a pocket-rocket cocktail dress in lipstick red leather, and Naomi Campbell in a tuxedo jacket worn open over a barely-there lace trim bra.

Burton has been at Givenchy less than a year, but Alexander McQueen’s long-term right-hand woman has already established a new identity for the house and for herself. Givenchy, the spiritual home of Audrey Hepburn and the little black dress, has an immaculate bloodline of glamour that runs from Paris to Hollywood, but it is a relative minnow as a business. Her recent predecessors had mostly leaned into streetwear and utility-coded metallic accents, but Burton is bringing back the glamour.

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Captain of oil tanker linked to Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ to face trial in France

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Vladimir Putin denounces seizing of the vessel as an act of ‘piracy’ and warned it could provoke confrontation

The captain of an oil tanker that authorities in France have detained off the country’s Atlantic coast and that President Emmanuel Macron has linked to Russia will go on trial in February over the crew’s alleged refusal to cooperate, a French prosecutor has said.

Macron has alleged that the tanker belongs to Russia’s “shadow fleet” of ageing tankers of uncertain ownership that are avoiding western sanctions over Moscow’s war in Ukraine. He also did not rule out that it could have been involved in drone flights over Denmark as it was sailing last week off the coast of the Nordic country.

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French military detain two after boarding Russia-linked oil tanker suspected of launching drones

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Tanker, named on list of ‘shadow fleet’ vessels, may have been launchpad for drones that closed Denmark airports

French military personnel have boarded an oil tanker named on a list of Russia’s “shadow fleet” vessels and suspected of being a launchpad for mystery drone flights that forced the closure of airports in Denmark last week.

Stéphane Kellenberger, the public prosector in Brest, told Agence France-Presse that two crew members – who presented themselves as the ship’s captain and his first mate – had been taken into custody.

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Eleven arrested for placing pigs’ heads near French mosques and other hate crimes

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Serbian nationals also accused by Serbian police of defacing Jewish sites, as French officials investigate foreign interference

Serbian police have arrested 11 people, accusing them of “inciting hatred” in France and Germany, and linking them to acts that include placing pigs’ heads near mosques and defacing Jewish sites.

The arrests came days after French prosecutors said foreign interference was probably to blame for a spate of provocative acts that had targeted Jewish and Muslim sites in France in recent years, as tensions run high over the war in Gaza. French officials have previously said they were investigating Russia’s role in destabilising operations that have stoked social tensions and sown division in France.

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It’s goodnight Vienna as Paris sleeper train to Austria and Berlin hit by cuts

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Some Nightjet services suspended from mid-December after French withdrawal amid public budget crisis

Night train services linking Paris, Berlin and Vienna are to end from mid-December because of the French government’s withdrawal of funding, the Austrian national rail operator has said, in a blow to sleeper travel on important European routes.

ÖBB, the largest provider of such trains in Europe, has led a drive to revive a once popular form of low-emission transport as an alternative to flying.

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Nicolas Sarkozy’s lawyers will try to ensure time in prison is ‘as short as possible’

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Former French president sentenced to five years for criminal conspiracy over election campaign funds scheme with Gaddafi regime

Lawyers for the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy have said they will try to ensure he serves as little time in prison as possible, after he was sentenced to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to get election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

“We’re going to make sure that his incarceration will be as short as possible,” Sarkozy’s lawyer, Jean-Michel Darrois, told the BFMTV news channel on Friday after he became the first French president to go to jail.

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Sarkozy’s spectacular downfall marks turning point in France’s struggle against graft

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Experts say political legacy of former president convicted of criminal conspiracy now appears impossible to rebuild

When a Paris court handed Nicolas Sarkozy a five-year prison sentence on Thursday – for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to get election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi – it was a historic moment for modern France.

The rightwing Sarkozy, who served as president between 2007 and 2012, was known in office not just for his hard line on immigration and national identity but for championing harsher sentencing for delinquents. He is now expected to enter jail within a matter of months.

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Sarkozy says he will ‘sleep in jail but with head held high’ after conviction

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Former French president receives five-year prison sentence for criminal conspiracy over pact with Gaddafi regime

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy said he would “sleep in jail but with my head held high” after receiving a five-year prison sentence for criminal conspiracy – the first time a former head of state has been sent to prison in modern French history.

The verdict and sentencing followed a trial in which he and his aides were accused of making a corruption pact with the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to receive funding for the 2007 French presidential election campaign.

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Paris court to rule on Nicolas Sarkozy corruption charge

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Former president and others accused of receiving millions of euros in illegal election funding from Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi

A Paris court is to rule whether the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is guilty of receiving millions of euros in illegal election campaign funding from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, in the biggest political financing scandal in modern French history.

Judges will deliver their verdict on Thursday after the state prosecutor recommended a seven-year jail term for Sarkozy, who went on trial with 12 other people – including three former government ministers – accused of criminal conspiracy to receive funds from a foreign dictator. Sarkozy and the other accused have denied wrongdoing.

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‘Guess what?’ Macron phones Trump after US president’s motorcade blocks his car

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Bemused French president forced to take unscheduled 30-minute trek through the streets of New York

Emmanuel Macron had to walk half an hour by foot through New York after his speech to the United Nations on recognising Palestine as a state.

Video footage shows him getting out of his car to talk to police officers after they stop his vehicle to make way for the expected arrival of the motorcade of Donald Trump, the US president.

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Wealth tax would be deadly for French economy, says Europe’s richest man

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LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, who could take €1bn hit, says proposed 2% levy ‘aims to destroy liberal economy’

Europe’s richest man, the luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, has said that a wealth tax that could cost him more than €1bn (£817m) would be deadly for France’s economy.

The French founder of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton said in a statement to the Sunday Times that calls for a 2% wealth tax on all assets “aims to destroy the liberal economy, the only one that works for the good of all”.

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UN votes to allow Palestinian president to address annual gathering via video link

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Trump had refused to grant visas for Palestinian delegation due to attend conference and UN general assembly

The United Nations general assembly has voted to allow the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to address next week’s annual gathering of world leaders next week in New York via video link after Donald Trump said he would not give him a US visa.

The resolution received 145 votes in favour and five votes against, while six countries abstained.

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Eritrean man is second to be deported to France under UK’s ‘one in, one out’ deal

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Home Office says man left Heathrow for Paris early on Friday after losing high court attempt to block move

An Eritrean man has been deported to France under the UK government’s “one in, one out” deal with the neighbouring country.

The man – the second to be deported under the agreement – was on a flight that left Heathrow for Paris at 6.15am on Friday, the Home Office confirmed after he lost a high court attempt to block the move.

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