American president moves to repair relationship after France was blindsided by security pact
Joe Biden has moved to repair his damaged personal and political relationship with Emmanuel Macron by acknowledging that the announcement of a security and technology pact that blindsided France was a “clumsy” episode handled with a lack of grace.
Continue reading...Analysis: British government is not entirely innocent but Paris knows forceful rhetoric should only go so far
In January 2017, Emmanuel Macron, in third place in the race to be the next president of France and seen by some as an electoral bubble waiting to burst, staged a photo opportunity in the fish market of Le Guilvinec in Brittany. “Brexit will not go well because Brexit cannot go well,” Macron told fishers who had raised their concerns about the future. “But I’ll make [the fishing problem] a red line in our negotiations with the UK.”
Macron’s seizing of the Élysée Palace later that year was hugely buoyed up by the turnout in the coastal region. Close to a third of voters in Brittany gave him their vote in the crucial first round of the 2017 contest, a greater proportion than in any other region of France.
Continue reading...UK environment secretary accuses France of using ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric in escalating dispute
Emmanuel Macron’s hopes of being re-elected president may be driving the diplomatic row with France over post-Brexit access to Britain’s fishing waters, the UK’s environment secretary has claimed.
George Eustice accused Paris of using “inflammatory” rhetoric in an escalating dispute over a shortfall in licences for French fishing vessels seeking to operate in the coastal waters of the UK and Jersey.
Continue reading...French president says Scott Morrison should propose tangible actions to heal rift, in first call since row
The French president has told the Australian prime minister that the scrapping of a multibillion-dollar submarine contract “broke the relationship of trust” and said Canberra should propose “tangible actions” to heal a diplomatic rift.
In their first phone call since Australia dumped the submarine plans, Emmanuel Macron also encouraged Scott Morrison to adopt a more ambitious climate policy, including a commitment “to cease production and consumption of coal at the national level and abroad”, according to a French government readout of the conversation.
Continue reading...Comments from French EU affairs minister come as British trawler is detained in France amid dispute
France will “now use the language of force” in an escalation of a row over post-Brexit fishing rights, France’s EU affairs minister has said, as French maritime police seized a British trawler found in its territorial waters without a licence.
One vessel was stopped off Le Havre in the early hours of Thursday morning, then rerouted to the quay and “handed over to the judicial authority”, while a second was given a verbal warning.
Continue reading...No 10 threatens retaliation against French measures including port ban on British fishing boats
A major trade dispute has broken out between the UK and France after Paris banned British fishing boats from key ports, vowed to impose onerous checks on cross-Channel trade, and threatened the UK’s energy supply over a row over post-Brexit rights to UK waters.
The move prompted a dramatic response from Downing Street where a spokesperson for Boris Johnson said the UK government would retaliate over what was a described as a potential breach of international law.
Continue reading...Emmanuel Macron and the far-right hopeful Marine Le Pen look set to be joined by numerous other candidates in the French presidential election. We look at the latest polling, and introduce some of the most likely candidates
France will vote to elect a new president in April, and the jostling for position among potential candidates is well under way. The current president, Emmanuel Macron, has yet to declare his candidacy but is expected to run again. His second-round opponent from 2017, the far-right populist Marine Le Pen, has already launched her campaign. Alongside them on the ballot will be Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist candidate, Yannick Jadot, representing the Green movement, and a candidate from the centre-right, to be chosen by Les Républicains, on 4 December. The far-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour, who has no political party, could declare an outsider bid.
Continue reading...Andrew Shearer’s unreported meeting in April with Joe Biden’s top Indo-Pacific adviser may have been the clincher for the Aukus security agreement
It was late April when one of Australia’s top intelligence chiefs arrived in Washington for important talks with key officials in the relatively new Biden administration.
Andrew Shearer, a longtime foreign policy hawk and one of Scott Morrison’s most influential advisers on how Australia should position itself at a time of rising tensions with China, met with Joe Biden’s top Indo-Pacific adviser, Kurt Campbell, in the building next to the White House on 30 April.
Continue reading...Several European nations have questioned British response but there are growing signs of fresh wave across continent
For the past several weeks, many western European countries have been eyeing Covid case numbers across the Channel with mounting trepidation.
“Why does Britain have more than 40,000 Covid cases a day, and why is it the European country with the most infections?” asked Spain’s ABC, while France’s L’Express criticised “disastrous myopia” in London.
Continue reading...Social media firm announces deal after long-running battle with national and regional newspapers
France has hailed a victory in its long-running quest for fairer action from tech companies after Facebook reached an agreement with a group of national and regional newspapers to pay for content shared by its users.
Facebook on Thursday announced a licensing agreement with the APIG alliance of French national and regional newspapers, which includes Le Parisien and Ouest-France as well as smaller titles. It said this meant “people on Facebook will be able to continue uploading and sharing news stories freely amongst their communities, whilst also ensuring that the copyright of our publishing partners is protected”.
Continue reading...Vaccine produced by French company uses inactivated Sars-CoV-2 virus and can be stored in fridge
A coronavirus jab based on traditional vaccine technology might be as effective as the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, data suggests, offering new hope for global vaccination efforts.
Vaccines currently approved for use in the UK deliver instructions for producing the coronavirus “spike” protein to cells in order, which triggers an immune response. However, the jab produced by the French pharmaceutical company Valneva involves delivering the whole – but inactivated – Sars-CoV-2 virus.
Continue reading...Exclusive: diplomatic effort by US following Australia cancelling $66bn deal with France not matched by London
The US has urged Britain to follow its example and try to repair its relations with Paris in the wake of the row over France’s loss of its submarine contract with Australia.
Australia pulled out of the $66bn (£48bn) contract for 12 diesel electric-powered submarines, signed in 2016, to opt instead for nuclear-powered submarines to be developed with America and the UK. The secretive and sudden cancellation of the contract has created a crisis of trust between Paris on the one hand and London, Canberra and Washington on the other.
Continue reading...French president attends memorial for those killed and lays flowers at bridge over the Seine
Emmanuel Macron has described a bloody police operation against Algerian pro-independence demonstrators 60 years ago that led to many deaths as an “unforgivable” crime.
Attending a memorial for those killed, Macron laid flowers at a bridge over the River Seine which marked a starting point for the protests in October 1961 that led to one of the darkest chapters of French postwar history.
Continue reading...Energy firm and director Alexander Temerko have given £1.1m between them to Conservatives
French mayors and residents along the Normandy coast are campaigning to block a project for a cross-Channel electricity cable backed by a Ukrainian-born businessman who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservative party.
Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s business secretary, is due to decide this week on whether to give the go-ahead to a £1.2bn project for the 148-mile cable between Normandy and Hampshire. The firm says the link, which will run through Portsmouth, could supply up to 5% of Britain’s electricity needs.
Continue reading...With just months to go before presidential polls, the centre-right Les Républicains, under pressure from both flanks, are scrambling for a suitable candidate
Six months before a presidential election and France’s mainstream right finds itself squeezed – between the hammer and the anvil as they say here – without a candidate and facing an existential threat from either side.
On one flank are the far-right Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, a polarising television pundit who wants to talk about immigration, identity and Islam – the three i’s – and ban “non-French” names such as Mohamed.
Continue reading...UK residents abroad are shocked at the lack of mask wearing back home, and point fingers at the government’s blase approach
Compared with some other countries, along with high numbers of Covid cases and deaths, the UK has relatively relaxed Covid restrictions, with no mandatory vaccine passports, no social distancing measures, and no mask mandate in England.
Four people from the UK and in Europe share their views on the country’s approach to Covid restrictions compared with others they are visiting or living in.
Continue reading...Prospect of the FDP’s Christian Lindner taking charge has ‘half of Europe quaking in its boots’
Germany’s biggest neighbours are watching the formation of the country’s new government with a mixture of hope and fear, amid concerns that a fiscal hardliner hotly tipped to become the next finance minister could drag the continent back to the frosty standoffs of the eurozone crisis.
The Social Democratic party (SPD), the German Greens and the Free Democratic party (FDP) were expected to inch further towards a “traffic light” power-sharing deal on Friday, with formal coalition talks likely to start next week.
Continue reading...Chloë McCardel finally achieved her dream of crossing the English Channel more times than anyone else. The 36-year-old Australian completed her 44th crossing a little after 2pm BST, eclipsing the previous record held by British swimmer Alison Streeter. ‘I’m buzzing right now, I feel like I could go again and swim the channel again tomorrow, although that's not a very good idea’, she said. After starting in the dead of night at Shakespeare Beach at Dover, she touched land at Wissant Beach on the French side, before returning to her support boat to celebrate
► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube
Slower vaccination rates in east lead to dramatic surge in cases, while UK remains outlier in west as cases rise despite vaccinations
Higher vaccination rates are translating to lower Covid infection and death rates in western Europe than in parts of central and eastern Europe, the latest data suggests – except in the UK, where case numbers are surging.
Figures from Our World In Data indicate a clear correlation between the percentage of people fully vaccinated and new daily cases and fatalities, with health systems in some under-inoculated central and eastern EU states under acute strain.
Continue reading...Largest study of its kind also finds vaccines appear to protect against worst effects of Delta variant
Vaccination reduces the risk of dying or being hospitalised with Covid-19 by 90%, a French study of 22.6 million people over the age of 50 has found.
The research published on Monday also found that vaccines appear to protect against the worst effects of the most prevalent virus strain, the Delta variant.
Continue reading...