France

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron is an embarrassment to France

France’s under-15s can carry on using social media after a parliamentary ban was struck down by the Republic’s constitutional council on Friday. The ruling is a humiliating blow for Emmanuel Macron, who had championed the legislation from the beginning. It had won the backing of both parliament and the Senate last month but the Council had other ideas. In rejecting the Bill, France’s highest constitutional authority judged that it “places a disproportionate restriction on freedom of expression and communication.” Macron heard the news as he enjoyed the surf at his seaside retreat on the Riveria, a break that has already provoked the ire of many. Should the President be gallivanting on a jet-ski when so much of the country is ravaged by destructive wildfires?

macron

Wednesday

Catriona Olding

A toast to the heroic French firefighters

From our UK edition

Provence ‘Imbeciles! I told them! When the fire comes on the hill there, it always goes that way… did they listen? They did not! They fought it from the wrong side. Look at the mess.’ The old man, the last in the village still wearing a beret, was angry with the pompiers. This was two days after the fire which almost engulfed American Cathy’s house. Now the centre of the village was filling with brown smoke from a fire on the eastern side of our closest hill and the Sanctuary of Notre-Dame de Grâce was threatened a second time. In fairness to the pompiers, the last time fire struck there was in 1962. Following the first world war, many parts of rural Provence were depopulated.

Martin Vander Weyer

Farming today: field fires and food price hikes ahead

From our UK edition

I report from FTSE boardrooms and City bars, but I also spend time – mostly in Yorkshire, currently in France – among farmers who often feel ignored by the rest of the business media. This week, with three-quarters of England officially in drought and produce imports afflicted by fierce heat across Europe, agriculture is for once top of the agenda. So what has this freakish summer really done to our fields? My northern arable correspondent has never seen an earlier harvest, with ‘barley less than average, oilseed rape excellent, wheat OK on heavy clay but very poor on lighter soils. Slight rises in crop prices won’t compensate for yield reductions, we’ve lost the safety net of direct acreage subsidies – and a single spark from a combine or baler can set whole fields alight.

Saturday

Catriona Olding

Tears and terror on the front line of the French wildfires

Provence As soon as I opened my front door I could smell it. Along the path, flakes of white ash landed on my arms. Looking north beyond the cliff, I saw a rapidly increasing plume of brown-black smoke. Before long it filled a third of the sky. Not again. Ten years ago, almost to the day, the concrete shack I was renting in the woods a few miles from the village was almost engulfed. Jeremy was having a break and staying with me when a wildfire broke out in the valley below. The smoke and flames looked about a quarter of a mile away and firefighting Canadairs flew low overhead. Friends told us to leave but I refused. I’d left everything behind in Scotland 18 months before and couldn’t face doing so again. Jeremy asked if he’d have to knock me out and throw me over his shoulder.

wildfires

Thursday

Jane Stannus

Legal organ harvesting is just a PR campaign away

Summertime, and the living isn’t as easy as it used to be. The dying, though, is getting easier, especially if you’re in France, Canada or New York. New York’s MAID law will come into effect August 5: supposedly only for those whose deaths are expected within six months, supposedly through self-administered doses only. But the details don't matter. The important part is this: in New York, the state can now authorize the taking of innocent human life. In early July, the French Senate rejected euthanasia for the fourth time in a row. But the government invoked Article 45 of the French constitution and forced the legislation through, "creating a right" to assisted suicide (as if the state were the divine origin of rights, and could create them at the snap of a finger).

Euthanasia
Catriona Olding

Tears and terror on the front line of the French wildfires

Provence As soon as I opened my front door I could smell it. Along the path, flakes of white ash landed on my arms. Looking north beyond the cliff, I saw a rapidly increasing plume of brown-black smoke. Before long it filled a third of the sky. Not again. Ten years ago, almost to the day, the concrete shack I was renting in the woods a few miles from the village was almost engulfed. Jeremy was having a break and staying with me when a wildfire broke out in the valley below. The smoke and flames looked about a quarter of a mile away and firefighting Canadairs flew low overhead. Friends told us to leave but I refused. I’d left everything behind in Scotland 18 months before and couldn’t face doing so again. Jeremy asked if he’d have to knock me out and throw me over his shoulder.

Wednesday

Toby Young

Won’t someone please think of the French wine?

From our UK edition

There was something surreal about my visit to La Cité du Vin, Bordeaux’s wine museum, last Saturday. From the top floor, with its panoramic view of the city, you could see the smoke from the Gironde wildfire turning the sky yellow, yet none of the staff seemed remotely concerned. This was in spite of the fact that the conflagration had already triggered France’s largest evacuation since the second world war and was getting closer to Bordeaux every hour. OK, maybe they thought it unlikely they’d be asked to leave their homes, but weren’t they worried about the region’s vineyards? These people worked at a museum dedicated to celebrating wine, for Christ’s sake.

Matthew Fraser

Patrick Bruel and the death of French seduction

From our UK edition

Patrick Bruel was once a heartthrob pop star whose dark brooding looks fuelled a ‘Bruelmania’ fever that swept through France in the 1990s. He sold millions of albums and was one of the country’s most bankable film stars. Today, Bruel is a different man. Age 67, he has been disgraced by multiple accusations of sexual assault and rape. Yesterday, two new women accused him of sex crimes, bringing the total number of cases to six. Bruel denies wrongdoing. The first allegations against Bruel surfaced several years ago but were dismissed by French police due to lack of evidence. Other women have since come forward claiming that he sexually harassed or assaulted them. Many cite incidents that stretch back two or three decades, beyond the statute of limitations.

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

Macron could have done more to stop the Bordeaux fires

From our UK edition

Firefighters in France have spent the weekend trying to save Bordeaux from an immense conflagration. On Monday morning, the city’s prefecture announced that the situation was ‘broadly stable’, although nine firefighters were injured on Sunday, bringing the total to 84 since the fire began on Wednesday. More than 42,000 hectares have been lost to the fire and the flames are now nine miles from Bordeaux, France’s ninth biggest city with a population of 270,000. The city’s mayor, Thomas Cazenave, has said there are no plans to evacuate residents, but holidaymakers have been told to stay away.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

Macron won’t stop at a social media ban for children

France has become the first European Union country to ban social media access for under 15s. The National Assembly passed a Bill Tuesday evening that will prevent children using platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat. The Bill also bans the use of cell phones in high schools. In a message on X, a jubilant President Emmanuel Macron hailed the legislation and expressed his gratitude to MPs, who approved it by 279 votes to 81. “It’s up to the Constitutional Council to rule, then on to action to make this measure concrete and protect our children online,” he said. Macron would like the legislation to take effect from September, the start of the new school year, but first the Bill will be examined by the Constitutional Council, the highest constitutional authority in the Republic.

social media ban

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer

Jewish artists are no longer safe in France

It is dangerous to be a Jewish artist in France. On Saturday, the well-known DJ Barbara Butch was forced to abandon her performance during a music festival in the Alpine city of Grenoble. Butch is an icon of the LGBT movement and best-known, among international audiences, for appearing in the "Last Supper" skit during the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics. On that occasion the 45-year-old Butch infuriated conservative figures on both sides of the Atlantic with her irreverence. Donald Trump labeled the parody a "disgrace," as did the Vatican, which deplored "the offense done to many Christians and believers of other religions." On Saturday, it was the far-left who took offense to the presence of Butch.

Wednesday

Catriona Olding

Trapped with the plane passengers from Hell

Provence Under late June’s ferocious heat dome, during what turned out to be an almost eight-hour drive to join Martin Vander Weyer and his guests for three nights in the Dordogne, my car was telling me it wouldn’t start due to a recurring AdBlue emissions fault. And my old phone was pegging out. At home I hadn’t had hot water – or cold – for five days because the boiler was broken. There was also a leak. I had to turn the water on and off at the mains when I needed it. Life was turning out to be more troglodyte than I bargained for. Although the water, when it ran, was chilly, my brain was overheating even before the temperature hit 44°C in the Dordogne. Like the UK, I don’t have enough income or savings to cover all my bills.

Macron Starmer
Gavin Mortimer

Europe’s centrists are falling one by one

Few in France will have been as devastated by their team’s defeat in last night’s World Cup semi-final as Emmanuel Macron. The president put on a brave face, tweeting his congratulations to Spain and thanking the French team "for carrying our colors with commitment." But how Macron must have dreamed of a French World Cup triumph in Sunday’s final. He would have been in New Jersey – as he was in Moscow in 2018 when the Bleus won the World Cup –dancing a jig as his bête noire, Donald Trump, presented the trophy to his boys. Macron's presidency is ending with a whimper In a sense the French football team are a metaphor for Macron’s presidency.

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer

The truth about the French drownings

From our UK edition

More than 90 people drowned in France between 19 June and the end of the month during the country’s intense heatwave. Government figures released last week were accompanied by a warning from sport and youth minister Marina Ferrari. ‘Very young children are particularly vulnerable and must not be left unsupervised,’ she said. ‘There are young people engaging in dangerous behaviour, such as “I’m going to jump off a bridge” or “I’m going into an unsupervised canal”.’ Such antics were de rigueur during the heatwave, particularly in cities such as Paris, where people cooled off by leaping from bridges into rivers and canals. In the Canal Saint-Martin, in the heart of the capital, two young men drowned in separate incidents.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

Why is Giorgia Meloni courting Emmanuel Macron?

From our UK edition

Emmanuel Macron has lost a friend in Keir Starmer. The French President paid tribute to the outgoing British Prime Minister last week, describing him as a man of ‘dignity, decency and courage’. When one door closes another one opens, and while Starmer was organising the removal vans, Macron was welcoming Giorgia Meloni to the Côte d’Azur. Last week’s Franco-Italian summit was the first of its kind since 2020; Meloni was elected prime minister two years later. For Macron, she posed a threat to European ‘values’ because her party had its roots in postwar fascism Her victory did not go down well with Macron and his centrist government.

Martin Vander Weyer

Storm warnings for Burnham from the weathermen of Basel

From our UK edition

Reading the annual economic report of the Bank for International Settlements while lying beside a pool with an Aperol spritz in hand is a challenge I accepted on your behalf. Based in Basel as a hub for the world’s central banks, BIS is always careful in its prose for fear of setting cats among global pigeons. But this year’s bulletin is a serious storm warning, based on four factors that in a worst-case combination could trigger market mayhem. First, inflation driven by Middle East conflict has left oil market imbalances that will take ‘several quarters to purge’, with the risk of further volatility; BIS doesn’t actually say ‘If Trump goes batshit crazier’, but that’s the subtext.

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s ideological war on air conditioning

America is to blame for the heatwave that has caused so much misery in France in the last fortnight. Audrey Pulvar, the Socialist deputy mayor of Paris, took to social media at the weekend, addressing a letter to "dear American journalists" who have been making fun of Paris because the city doesn’t have air conditioning. "This is so rich!” exclaimed Pulvar. "You bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities, which are 90 percent air conditioned, are not unrelated to this." It sounds like Madame Pulvar is a little hot and bothered, which isn’t surprising given the furnace that France has become. In Chablis, a little south of where I live in Burgundy, the temperature hit 41.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

The French love affair with Scotland

France’s summer smash at the cinema is set to be a comedy called The Perfects. It opens next week with an all-star cast that includes Scottish actor Alan Cumming. The Perfects are a family of con-artists who flee France to escape the police and they end up in Scotland where madcap adventures in tartan ensue. It’s further proof that France can’t get enough of Bonnie Scotland. Films, television documentaries, newspaper features and even a puff piece earlier this month on the primetime lunchtime news about a visit to the most isolated pub in Scotland.  Billy Connolly once famously likened Scottish folk singers to ‘singing shortbread tins," churning out clichéd lyrics about mountains, heather and a Roamin' in the Gloamin.’ "Garbage!

scotland
Gavin Mortimer

Britain is the weak man of Europe on border control

Britain and France have rewritten the "one in, one out" migrant deal nearly a year after it came into effect. The treaty, described as "groundbreaking" by both countries last summer, has struggled to stem the numbers of migrants heading from France to England in small boats. It soon became apparent that the deal contained a loophole that enabled a handful of deported migrants to return to Britain in the back of a lorry. Britain's Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has agreed with her French counterpart, Laurent Nuñez, to close this loophole by tweaking the treaty to stipulate that its terms apply to any returning migrant regardless of whether they enter a second time by boat or by vehicle.

Lee Langley

Nagging doubts: Twenty Minutes of Silence, by Hélène Bessette, reviewed

From our UK edition

One critic memorably described Waiting for Godot as a play in which nothing happens, twice. Twenty Minutes of Silence is a novel in which something happens, repeatedly. Ina luxurious villa in northern France a man lies dead, surrounded by disorder – apparently a robbery gone wrong. When the police arrive, they find he was shot with his own gun and the murder weapon is missing. His wife and 15-year-old son become suspects. What is really going on here? Again and again we are taken through the night’s events, starting afresh each time. The dead man was a multi-millionaire with dubious associates. The marriage relationship seems ambiguous: the wife could have been deceived or unfaithful.