Gavin Mortimer

Tuesday was ‘Europe Day’, or as the European Union proclaimed on its website, the occasion to ‘celebrate peace and unity’ and give thanks to Robert Schuman. It was the French statesman's declaration on 9 May 1950 that put in place the framework ‘for a new form of political cooperation in Europe’.  No leader in Europe marked the day quite as enthusiastically as Emmanuel Macron. His Renaissance party tabled a bill on Tuesday in the National Assembly demanding that every village and town hall throughout France be made to fly the EU flag alongside the French tricolour.  One wonders what they made of Macron’s ‘Together, united’ declaration in Rome The President of France will certainly support the bill such is his zeal for the EU.

France and Germany have fallen out again after the French interior minister Gérald Darmanin accused Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni of incompetence in her handling of the migrant crisis. In response, Itay’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has cancelled a meeting in Paris scheduled for today and he is demanding an apology from Darmanin for his 'vulgar insults'. Meloni has put on hold her own visit to Paris, which was due to take place next month, according to the Italian press. It’s not the first time the interior minister has outraged a neighbour. Twelve months ago, Darmanin was accused of wrongly laying the blame for the chaos that erupted in Paris during the Champions League final on Liverpool fans.

My first instinct was to check the date: was it actually April 1st on Monday? On realising there was no mistake the second reaction was one of wonderment that anyone still takes the United Nations seriously.  The once respected organisation held its Universal Periodic Review in Geneva on Monday, and France didn’t fare well.   As a succession of shamelessly panjandrums slapped down France, its police were once more coming under sustained attack by hordes of anarchists and far-left extremists Beacons of liberty lined up to trash the Republic for what they described as the heavy-handedness of its police in recent weeks. Russia, Iran, Venezuela and China expressed their grave anxiety about state repression.

It is almost six years to the day since Marine Le Pen went head to head with Emmanuel Macron in a live television debate that came to be seen as the defining moment of the 2017 French presidential campaign. It did not end well for the leader of the National Front, the party she has since rebranded as the National Rally. Le Pen was ripped apart by her young opponent on the evening of May 3. Macron combined boyish charm with a head for facts, outmanoeuvring Le Pen in every argument and on every subject. It’s increasingly hard to find anyone in France who respects their president. Le Pen was accused of being too aggressive and too personal, as encapsulated in her opening statement. ‘Monsieur Macron,’ she announced to the 16.

In the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, France is getting tough on illegal immigrants. Authorities launched Operation Wuambushu (Take Back) on Monday, with police sent into the shanty towns to remove those there illegally and demolish their settlements. Around half of Mayotte's population are foreign, mostly illegal immigrants from Comoros, 45 miles to the north-west. But it wasn't long before the crackdown came unstuck. Mayotte is the same size in land mass as the Isle of Wight – 147 square miles – but whereas the latter has a population of 142,000, Mayotte’s is somewhere between 350,000 and 400,000. No one knows the precise figure because of the high rate of illegal immigration. The arrivals live in shanty towns, and crime and disease have risen as a result.

The number keep rising. Italy’s Interior Ministry announced at the weekend that 35,085 migrants have arrived on their shores this year, an increase of 27,000 on the same period in 2022. In England meanwhile, 497 migrants landed on the Kent coast on Saturday, a new daily record for crossings.  So the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s visit to London this week is well timed. She and Rishi Sunak will have much to discuss, aware that to a large extent their political futures hinge on whether they can stop what some of their ministers have termed an ‘invasion’.  Last week, one of Meloni’s cabinet went further.

Five months and counting until France hosts the Rugby World Cup. For England supporters, the tournament kicks off at the stylish Stade Vélodrome in Marseille against Argentina on 9 September, one of six fixtures hosted by the Mediterranean city. Scotland take on South Africa the day after the England game, and two of the tournament’s quarter-finals will also be in Marseille, as they were in 2007 when France last hosted the World Cup.  That year was a peaceful one by Marseille’s standards, with only seven murders attributed to gangland wars. There was a new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who had campaigned on a ‘tough on crime’ ticket, and that, plus the hosting of rugby’s showpiece event, might have had an effect.

Nearly one in two left-wing voters in France believes the country has too many immigrants. When the same polling company conducted a similar survey five years ago the figure was 27 per cent. The fact it is now 48 per cent demonstrates how the gap has widened between left wing politicians and their electorate when it comes to immigration. The polling company that carried out the survey headlined their findings ‘The Great Taboo (on the left)’. The refusal of left-wing politicians in France to heed their voters’ anxieties about mass immigration is mirrored across western Europe, except in Denmark, where the left has listened and as a result is in power.

In the last week, more than 1,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel, which is twice the number of people that the government’s barge can house on the Dorset coast.   This was unveiled last week as the latest wheeze to address Britain’s migrant crisis: a floating barge with 222 rooms to house up to 500 migrants as their asylum applications are processed. It might be an idea to put in an order for a few more.   According to Frontex, the European Border Agency, 5,622 migrants landed on the Kent coast in January and February this year, an increase of 82 per cent on the same period in 2022.  This is despite the fact there has been a marked decrease in Albanians crossing the Channel because of Rishi Sunak’s deal with his Albanian counterpart.

Since the middle of March in France, 1,247 Gendarmes, police and fire fighters have been injured in the line of duty. There have been over 2,500 deliberate acts of arson and around 350 buildings have been vandalised in some shape or form.  Forty-seven of those gendarmes were injured on Saturday March 25 when they were attacked by a large and well-organised army of environmental extremists at Sainte-Soline in western France, some of whom came from Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The previous October 61 gendarmes were wounded at the same location. Television footage of last month’s violence showed the extremists advancing towards the gendarmes in a well-drilled military manoeuvre, throwing Molotov cocktails from behind shields.

Paris has banned e-scooters after the people were asked to vote in a referendum. Not many of the capital’s 1.38 million registered citizens bothered to cast their ballot on Sunday, but of the 103,000 who did 90 per cent voted against.   The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo hailed the referendum as a red letter day for ‘participative democracy' over ‘democracy of public opinion and polls’. The city’s three e-scooter operators – Dott, Lime and Tier – quickly cried foul, citing what they described as ‘very restrictive voting methods’; only 21 voting stations were open, and there was no internet voting.

Stéphane Rozès, the author of a book entitled ‘Chaos’, was on French radio this week receiving congratulations for being a visionary. The chaos which he described in his book, published last November, is now being played out in France, as hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets. Asked to explain its cause, Rozès explained that it has been building since 1992, the year France signed the Maastricht Treaty, the beginning of the European Union.  Rozès is not alone in this view. One of France’s best known philosophers, the left-wing Michel Onfray, has been saying the same thing for years. ‘France died in 1992, the date of the Maastricht Treaty,’ he said in an interview in 2018.

There was a sense of foreboding in France at the start of this week. After the anarchy of last Thursday and the extraordinary violence in western France on Saturday, where radical environmentalists fought a pitched battle with police, what would the next seven days bring?  Much of the media speculated that the 10th day of action organised by unions in protest at the government’s pension reform bill would result in the sort of scenes witnessed across France five days earlier, with city halls torched, shops sacked and police stations attacked. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the left-wing La France Insoumise, was accused by the government on Monday of tacitly encouraging the disorder. Yesterday, he called for protestors to make their point peacefully.

Yesterday was a day of anarchy in France – and the protests overnight have led to King Charles's state visit to France, which was due to start this weekend, being cancelled. The King had been due to visit Paris and Bordeaux, two of the cities hit by the most extreme violence. In Bordeaux, a town hall was sacked. In Lorient, a police station was attacked – and in Nantes a court was vandalised. The worst of the violence was in Paris. Hundreds of thugs clad in black fought running battles with police, 149 of whom were injured, and they also smashed and looted shops, banks and restaurants.

The government of Emmanuel Macron won a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly on Monday by a mere nine votes. The cross-party no-confidence motion, tabled by a Centrist coalition fell just short of the 287 votes it needed to bring down the government.  To succeed the no-confidence motion required the support of the centre-right Republican party, augmenting the votes of the left-wing NUPE coalition and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, both of whom are opposed to the government’s reform bill that was passed last Thursday without a parliamentary vote. Instead, on Macron’s orders, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne used a controversial clause in the Constitution, Article 49.3, to pass the bill.

France is on the brink of another revolution! The proles are swarming to the barricades and it’s only a matter of time before President Macron is dragged from the Élysée palace.  That is the gist of some of the more excitable reporting about what happened yesterday in France. It was certainly a dramatic day after the government forced through its pension reform bill that will increase the age of retirement from 62 to 64. It did so on the orders of Macron, deploying a controversial clause in the constitution – article 49.3 – which legalises a bill without the need for a parliamentary vote.   Where were the opposition MPs in 2020, raging against a breakdown in democracy? It’s becoming a habit of Macron’s.

They say Spring is a magical time to visit Paris but perhaps not this year. It’s not so much love that is in the air of the French capital but the stench from 7,000 tons of uncollected rubbish.  The city’s refuse collectors have been on strike as part of the nationwide protests against the government’s pension reform. Workers at the three incinerators that dispose of Paris’s garbage have also downed tools and the walkout will last until at least Monday 20 March.   It’s not a strike that affects all the capital. In some of the arrondissements, private firms empty the bins and it is business as usual for them.