French political discussion megathread: Yellow Vest Redux

[brucejoel99]

Following his party's loss of their parlimentary majority, Macron has rejected the resignation of Elisabeth Borne as Prime Minister.

French President Emmanuel Macron has rejected a resignation offer from Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne before talks with the opposition seeking to end the deadlock sparked by his failure to secure a majority in parliamentary elections.

The development came on Tuesday as Macron was due to host far-right leader Marine Le Pen and other political party chiefs for rare talks at the Elysee Palace as he seeks solutions to an unprecedented situation that risks plunging his second term into crisis two months after it began.

Was this not expected? PMs, like Philippe in 2017, tender their resignation following the legislative elections & get re-appointed if they won the elections, with a reshuffle undertaken as necessary. Had they won their majority, she would've tendered her resignation, Macron would've accepted it, & then immediately re-appointed her to head a new ministry, pursuant to the election result. Given the so far-unproduced lack of an alternative produced by the election, though, she stays for now. The question now is whether she (or somebody else under Macron) successfully pursues a permanent government, be that a minority functioning with opposition legislators on a case-by-case basis as necessary, or a coalition?

[NewYorkExpress]

Two different Ministers have been accused of rape since the formation of the cabinet. This doesn't count Darmanin, who entered the cabinet already accused of rape.

In a further setback for embattled French President Emmanuel Macron, Paris prosecutors have opened an investigation into allegations of rape against another newly appointed member of government.




Two complaints have been levelled against French Secretary of State for Development and the Francophonie, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, a former gynaecologist.

A report by news magazine Marianne and later confirmed by AFP said the first complaint was filed on 25 May, which led to the opening of an investigation two days later. The second was filed on 16 June.

Both women said Zacharopoulou, who was appointed Secretary of State last month, raped them as she was carrying out her professional duties "in a medical setting".


.....

The accusations against her come on the back of rape complaints against Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin – which were dismissed – and against Solidarity Minister Damien Abad.
 

[parochial boy]

Probably meaningless news to everyone, but I am an only relaying it because I actually liked his channel. But big #balancetonyoutubeur news today with Léo Grasset, of the Dirty Biology channel, and who gathered international attention last year when he revealed that he had been approached by a Russian backed agency to lie about the Covid vaccines, has been accused of serially abusing other pop science youtubers, including the rape of one, as yet, anonymous one. Big revelation by Mediapart that has caused a big storm.

In somewhat more amusing news - Éric Zemmour's bad week continues as he has apparently been banned from the Ritz hotel swimming pool. Allegedly for having a screaming fit at an American tourist. The poor man...

[Хahar 🤔]

The French Burkini ban was upheld in court.

rance's highest administrative court has upheld a ban on full-body "burkini" swimsuits in public pools, rejecting an appeal by the city of Grenoble.

Last month, Grenoble authorised all swimwear, including burkinis, sparking a legal battle with the government.

Burkinis are worn largely by Muslim women as a way of preserving modesty and upholding their faith.

But the court said it could not allow "selective exceptions to the rules to satisfy religious demands".

The dispute went all the way to the Council of State after a local court in Grenoble suspended the ban on the grounds that it seriously undermined the principle of neutrality in public services.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin also weighed in, describing the policy as an "unacceptable provocation" that was contrary to French secular values.

What exactly is being described as an "unacceptable provocation" here?

[NewYorkExpress]

Parliament is pushing to inscribe abortion rights into the French Constitution.

A group of lawmakers from the French president’s party will propose a bill to inscribe abortion rights into the country’s constitution, according to a statement by two members of parliament on Saturday.

The move comes after the US supreme court overturned a 50-year-old ruling and stripped women’s constitutional protections for abortion.

The right to abortion in France is already inscribed in a 1975 law relating to the voluntary termination of pregnancy within the legal framework that decriminalised abortion.

A constitutional law will cement abortion rights for future generations, said Marie-Pierre Rixain, a member of parliament and of Emmanuel Macron’s The Republic on the Move party.


The bill will include a provision that would make it “impossible to deprive a person of the right to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy”, according to the statement, released by two members of the National Assembly, France’s most powerful house of parliament.

Aurore Berge, the leader of Macron’s party group in the parliament, said the US supreme court’s decision to revoke abortion rights is “catastrophic for women around the world”.

“We must take steps in France today so we do not have any reversal of existing laws tomorrow,” Berge said in an interview with the public radio station France Inter on Saturday.

[NewYorkExpress]

Macron takes a stand against deep sea mining.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has called for a legal framework to stop deep-sea mining from going ahead and urged countries to put their money into science to better understand and protect the world’s oceans.

There is growing international interest in deep-sea mining but there is also pressure from some environmental groups and governments to either ban it or ensure it only goes ahead if appropriate regulations are in place.

Deep-sea mining would involve using heavy machinery on the ocean floor to suck up small rocks, known as nodules, that contain cobalt, manganese and other rare metals mostly used in batteries.

“We have … to create the legal framework to stop high-sea mining and to not allow new activities putting in danger these ecosystems,” Macron said on Thursday at an event on the sidelines of the UN ocean conference in Lisbon.


“But at the same time we need to promote our scientists and explorers to better know the high seas,” he added. “We need to better understand in order to protect.”

Although the president expressed concerns about deep-sea mining, France holds an exploration contract through the L’Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer (National Institute for Ocean Science) for a 75,000 sq km (29,000 sq mile) area in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an expanse of the north Pacific seabed rich in polymetallic nodules.

[NewYorkExpress]

Cabinet reshuffle.

Oliver Veran has become a Government Spokesperson.

Marlene Schiappa is now Secretary of State of Social and Solidarity Economy and Associative Life.

Damian Abad and Chrysoula Zacharopoulou both lost their positions.

Clement Beaune was named Transport Minister. Laurence Boone was named to replace him as Europe Minister.

Francios Braun was named Health Minister.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Parliament is pushing to inscribe abortion rights into the French Constitution.

A group of lawmakers from the French president’s party will propose a bill to inscribe abortion rights into the country’s constitution, according to a statement by two members of parliament on Saturday.

The move comes after the US supreme court overturned a 50-year-old ruling and stripped women’s constitutional protections for abortion.

The right to abortion in France is already inscribed in a 1975 law relating to the voluntary termination of pregnancy within the legal framework that decriminalised abortion.

A constitutional law will cement abortion rights for future generations, said Marie-Pierre Rixain, a member of parliament and of Emmanuel Macron’s The Republic on the Move party.


The bill will include a provision that would make it “impossible to deprive a person of the right to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy”, according to the statement, released by two members of the National Assembly, France’s most powerful house of parliament.

Aurore Berge, the leader of Macron’s party group in the parliament, said the US supreme court’s decision to revoke abortion rights is “catastrophic for women around the world”.

“We must take steps in France today so we do not have any reversal of existing laws tomorrow,” Berge said in an interview with the public radio station France Inter on Saturday.

The United States does appear to have a an important role in the world still: scaring the s*** out of other nations to the point that they basically compensate for us and how backwards we are moving.

[NewYorkExpress]

Now on the agenda, the nationalization of electricity giant EDF.

France is to renationalise its indebted electricity giant EDF in response to the energy crisis aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, has said.

Borne vowed to limit the impact of rising energy prices despite the political turmoil of Emmanuel Macron losing control of parliament in recent legislative elections.

“We must have full control over our electricity production and performance,” Borne told parliament in her first state-of-the-nation speech to parliament on Wednesday, as she tried to court opposition parties to avoid parliamentary deadlock.

“We must ensure our sovereignty in the face of the consequences of the war and the colossal challenges to come … That’s why I confirm to you the state’s intention to own 100% of EDF’s capital.”

The French state holds an 84% stake in EDF, one of the world’s biggest electricity producers, but the company is facing delays and budget overruns on new nuclear plants in France and Britain, and corrosion problems at some of its ageing reactors, which have heavily hit its shares price in recent months.

Macron, who was re-elected for a second term as president in April, wants massive investment in new nuclear reactors as a pillar of France’s push for carbon neutrality. Nationalising EDF is an idea that had also been recently promoted by the left, and Borne’s speech was seen as an attempt to appeal to different corners of a deeply divided parliament.

[NewYorkExpress]

Climate Change protestors interrupted stage 10 of the Tour De France.

Senior officials from the Tour de France organisation were seen dragging climate change protestors into a ditch during the tenth stage of this year’s race from Morzine to Megeve altiport.

Despite being chained together around the neck, a small group of young protesters were dragged off the race route by tour officials. At around 36 kilometres from the finish, on a section of straight road, the protesters sat on the course and set off red flares. The stage breakaway and peloton were both halted until the road was cleared.

Climate activists from the Derniere Renovation movement said: “Since the government doesn’t care about the climate crisis, we need to come and take over the Tour de France to refocus attention on what matters for our survival. We need to make our government react as they lead us to the slaughterhouse. Non-violent disruption is our last chance to be heard and avoid the worst consequences of global warming,” the group said.

[Lechasseur]

https://amp.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/immigration-le-gouvernement-veut-expulser-tout-etranger-ayant-commis-des-actes-graves-20220709

LREM is clearly veering right on immigration and is taking up RN and LR's proposal to remove protections for foreigners with longstanding ties/residency in France from deportation following a conviction for a "grave offense", in particular removing protections for foreigners residing in France before the age of 13.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

https://twitter.com/cosminDZS/status/1546975067812216832

[parochial boy]

Everything that was posted here is “on topic” and removing posts you disagree with is overreach. This thread is leagues better than most French discourse going on in the current National Assembly.

It’s not, the main topics at the moment are the Tour de France, the heatwave and if you want politics, Macron’s bastille day speech that was mostly about his government programme and intentions. The burkini controversy is actually something people are not worrying about at the moment and the fact that it this theme so endlessly comes back here is a reflection of this forum’s obsessions as much it is of the average French person’s

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Everything that was posted here is “on topic” and removing posts you disagree with is overreach. This thread is leagues better than most French discourse going on in the current National Assembly.

It’s not, the main topics at the moment are the Tour de France, the heatwave and if you want politics, Macron’s bastille day speech that was mostly about his government programme and intentions. The burkini controversy is actually something people are not worrying about at the moment and the fact that it this theme so endlessly comes back here is a reflection of this forum’s obsessions as much it is of the average French person’s

Plus something about Macron losing a vote on vaccine passports?

[Former President tack50]

Can we please for the love of God/Allah/Reason move on from this and talk about issues that actually matter to more than obsessive weirdoes with tunnel vision for their preferred model for dealing with cultural pluralism?

Like, you know, yesterday the government was actually defeated on several amendments to its COVID bill. Something that would have been just another Wednesday in Italy but is kind of uncharted territory in France, and indicative of just how much trouble FBM is in when the really controversial bills turn around.

Is it really that unprecedented in France? I suppose the real thing is that France just has not had many "fractured parliaments" in the past. Even during co-habitations, normally the opposition enjoyed a majority

[Sir John Johns]

Because everybody is asking for it, the latest days in French politics:

- Caroline Cayeux, the old lady Macron has appointed as minister for Territories’ Cohesion and Relationships with Territorial Collectivities (who has very reluctantly gave up her mayorship of Beauvais she was originally intending to keep while also a minister; meanwhile the Defense Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is still remaining the president of Eure departmental council), when asked on television about comments she made in 2012 over same-sex marriage (she called it a ‘caprice’ and ‘a design against nature’), unapologetically refused to disown them but, feeling obligated to show how open-minded she is, mentioned having friends chez ces gens-là (‘with those people’, an expression with a particularly disdaining/pejorative connotation, forever associated with Jacques Brel’s famous song containing some of the harshest lines in the history of chanson française delivered by the narrator against the members of a petty bourgeois family).

The controversy is now growing with Cayeux’s declarations having been denounced even by Éric Ciotti (not really a champion of LGBT rights but he will not waste such an occasion to trash the Macron government) with LGBT associations contemplating filing a complaint against the minister and part of Renaissance plotting to get her booted from the government.



- When giving a press conference, a RN deputy, Jean-Baptiste Tanguy, made bizarre declarations about Macron’s past in the business sector: ‘Mister Rothschild said he has hired Macron because he was sympathetic and because he knew how to solicit the homoerotic aspirations of a certain number of cadres who thought Mister Macron would demonstrate interest for their career, at the end of their career’.

The declarations, a nice combo of antisemitism and homophobia, are undermining the whole ‘we’re the only adults in the room, the responsible and not all extremist ones in the opposition ranks unlike the clowns of the NUPES’ strategy followed by the RN. It also overshadowed what Tanguy wanted to denounce: the recent revelations about the very close relationships between Macron and the Uber company when he was an economy minister.

The worst part is that Tanguy is a former member of Dupont-Aignan’s Debout la France, supposedly a Gaullist party considered as a bit more serious and less incline to engage into nasty racist/antisemitic/homophobic controversies (well that was before Dupont-Aignan’s conversion to antivax theories). Also, De Gaulle’s right-hand man and successor served as general director of the Rothschild Bank but don’t expect the far-right to know the history of its own country.



- Macron somehow founds it would be a good idea to dispel any suspicion of favoritism in the Uber case by delivering in front of cameras while in an official trip a line attributed to Chirac (but that Chichi had the good taste to have said in a non public context): ça m'en touche une sans faire bouger l'autre ( ‘it touches one without moving the other’; yeah, referring to his testicles). Such an elegance from a president who had previously lectured a high school student who shouted at him: Ça va Manu?.



- as previously discussed, the RN, the NUPES and LR teamed up to defeat a bill opening the possibility for the government to reintroduce vaccine pass in public transportation, for minors of age over 12 or for travelers coming or going to foreign/overseas destinations (the RN apparently no longer cares about the hordes of contaminated foreigners it said would sweep across France if we’re not totally shut down the borders). Both the RN and the NUPES are celebrating such a victory against Macron. The perspective of other future collaborations? (like on Ukraine-related matters maybe?).

An amendment to reintegrate health employees who have refused to get vaccinated against Covid-19 also pushed hard by both the RN and the NUPES was however rejected. Buy maybe not for long as the new health minister is now contemplating surrendering to such demand. I really can’t wait for people getting diphtheria in the hospitals thanks to non-vaccinated medical staff in the following months (because if you think they will stop with the Covid-19 vaccine...)



- The justice has formally opened an investigation over accusations of sexual harassment and assault (dating back from 2014) against Éric Coquerel (LFI), the recently elected president of the finance commission in the National Assembly. The plaintiff is a former Parti de Gauche member who has been later active in the Yellow Jackets movement and is now very busy spreading anti-vax conspiracies.

Mélenchon (currently in a trip in Mexico to learn about democracy and citizen revolutions with Andrés Manuel López Obrador) who not even two months ago explained that ‘in terms of sexual and sexist violence, we firstly believing in the word of the woman’ (these were in the context of the Taha Bouhafs and Damien Abad cases of alleged sexual assault) has radically changed his rhetoric, explaining now that the accusations against Coquerel are a conspiracy to tarnish the reputation of the new president of the finance commission (surely staged by Macron, the CIA and the Mossad) and that the accuser should not be trusted because she is in cahoots with LFI’s enemies and so are everybody questioning Coquerel’s attitude with women.

https://twitter.com/sychazot/status/1547308535054479360

Sandrine Rousseau is now demanding Coquerel ‘withdrawing’ from the presidency of the finance commission but Quatennens is saying no.

[windjammer]

I don't have the desire to contribute anything to this discussion other than to remind posters to keep it civil. It's not an issue that deserves that level of personal investment.

There are a great number of uncharitable assumptions being made about the personal lives of posters with whom I'm good friends and of whose personal lives I thus know these assumptions to be untrue, yes.

Then stop behaving as an ass hole with people disagreeing with you on allowing Burkinis would be a great start.

[Хahar 🤔]

The declarations, a nice combo of antisemitism and homophobia, are undermining the whole ‘we’re the only adults in the room, the responsible and not all extremist ones in the opposition ranks unlike the clowns of the NUPES’ strategy followed by the RN.

A bold strategy given the typical quality of FN candidates!

[Sir John Johns]

The declarations, a nice combo of antisemitism and homophobia, are undermining the whole ‘we’re the only adults in the room, the responsible and not all extremist ones in the opposition ranks unlike the clowns of the NUPES’ strategy followed by the RN.

A bold strategy given the typical quality of FN candidates!

This was relatively similar to the (winning) strategy followed during the presidential election when Le Pen let Zemmour discussing the most controversial stuff, making the most extremist proposals and declaration and appearing as the most unsympathetic candidate and the biggest sociopath in the race (not the biggest challenge here as Zemmour decided to pick fights with relatives of victims of Islamist attacks and associations of disabled children’s rights) to look like as the candidate of the bread and butter issues and the one who actually care about ordinary folks. Le Pen went to the runoff and improved her 2017 result while having even less of a platform and a party deserted by most of the half-competent cadres.

Now, Le Pen and co are trying to repeat it in the National Assembly and, if the RN deputies are generally of a particularly low caliber, the ones of the LFI and even of Renaissance aren’t that better and not much less prone to be embroiled into controversies.

The strategy of ‘respectabilization’ of the RN is also greatly helped by the choice made by the NUPES (under the leadership of the LFI) to systematically attack Macron and the government with lots of pretty tiring rants against the failure of the president to win an absolute majority in the parliament and against the supposed ‘illegitimacy’ of the Borne government. The NUPES also started the legislature with a motion of non-confidence that achieved nothing (embarrassingly enough the only non-NUPES deputy to vote in favor was Dupont-Aignan) and has probably not particularly interested French people. When there is an ongoing war in Europe, rising prices in fuel and food sectors, a new wave of Covid-19 and historical heatwaves (this is already the second heat wave here, in Brittany, at temperatures we’re not used to and this is only mid-July), the priority is maybe not to bring the government down and got new elections just few days after the beginning of the legislature and in the middle of summer holidays.

Plus the NUPES deputies have did some silly happenings like a parodic wedding between a fake Macron and a fake Le Pen, supposedly to denounce an alliance between Renaissance and the RN. This is not very useful and is now looking as hypocrite since the NUPES has joined since voted with the far-right to defeat the government on vaccine passports.

https://twitter.com/2022Elections/status/1544657005352259584

Such attention-seeking attitude is also providing munitions to critics of the RN (but also LR) about the NUPES wanting to turn the National Assembly into university AG (‘general assemblies’ in which students – also sometimes people who aren’t at all students and are totally alien to the university – decided on actions like strikes or blockades of the university and often described as complete mess in which everybody is yelling and votes are decided in conditions not always meeting democratic standards) or ZAD (‘zones to defend’: squats established by ecologist radicals in natural areas to be defended against environmentally unfriendly projects that usually turned into battlefields when the police is coming to evict the squatters).

[Antonio the Sixth]

I am very dissatisfied with the many total hyperboles that both sides (yes, I'm gonna be that guy) of this discourse are producing. That's why I'd like it to stop.

[PSOL]

All this hewing and heaving over a Burqa is seriously pathetic. The burqa is a symbol of male ownership of another and has no place in society, to let its use be used among the most vulnerable of French women is to threaten the rights of all French women.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Because everybody is asking for it, the latest days in French politics:
[stuff]

Thank you for the update. It was an interesting read.

[afleitch]

So...

What's been happening in France

[PSOL]

So...

What's been happening in France

A lot of women are out there wearing Burkinis.

[parochial boy]

Well it’s hot. Like all of Europe

Crazy how every one of the last five summers has either had record breaking heat or record breaking thunderstorms or both at the same time. Calls me crazy, but it almost feels like the climate is changing somehow…