France on the edge

Jean Luc Melenchon speech at Stalingrad Square after the victory of the NFP at the legislativ elections, 7 July, Paris.
IMAGO/Starface

A Hopeful Surprise in France

Nessim Achouche
On the evening of Sunday, 7 July 2024, the Place de la République in Paris was once again filled with a compact crowd, but this time it was joy and shouts of victory that dominated the gathering immediately after the election results were announced.
read more "A Hopeful Surprise in France"
Demonstration against the extreme right in the presence of the new Popular Front 15 June, Paris.
IMAGO/Le Pictorium
When Emmanuel Macron was elected President of France in 2017, he vowed in his first public speech that the far right would be erased before of the end of his mandate. Seven years later, Marine Le Pen’ Rassemblement National (RN) is on the verge of power, set to walk through a door that was left wide open by Macron when he decided to dissolve the French legislative assembly and call for snap elections after the highest result ever registered for the far right in France in the European elections on 9 June. The results of the EU elections seemed to...
read more "France between Fascism and the Popular Front"
Clémence Guetté during a major LFI meeting before the first round of the French presidential election, in Paris, March 2022.
IMAGO/ABACAPRESS
****Version française ci-dessous****With only a few days to go before election day, the foundation’s Nessim Achouche spoke to Clémence Guetté, a member of the French National Assembly for La France insoumise (LFI) and co-president of the movement’s think tank, Institut La Boétie, about LFI’s electoral strategy and how Institut La Boétie helps to inform that strategy with research and serious debate.
read more "The Struggle for Hegemony Is a Struggle for Ideas"
European Election Debate With The French Candidates
Debatte zur Europawahl mit den französischen Kandidat*innen am 10. April 2024 in Brüssel.
IMAGO/ABACAPRESS
How French voters turn out in the European elections next month could have major domestic implications Do the French care about the European elections? Thus far, the European electoral campaign has failed to stir up much popular enthusiasm. Of course, it is only just getting underway, and headlines have focused primarily on the new government and farmers’ protests in recent months. The first televised debate, held on 14 March by TV channel Public Sénat, was a testament to this lack of interest: the public had to wait until less than three months before the elections ...
read more "A Test Run for 2027?"
An analysis of the perspectives for the French left and the NUPES in the 2024 European Parliament elections***Version française ci-dessous***   This study aims to provide a brief analysis of the current state of affairs in the European Union in order to analyse the perspectives of the French left in the 2024 European Parliament election. In France, the question of the union of the left was at the heart of public debates in the year preceding the presidential election of April 2022. This union was widely sought by a large majority of left-wing voters, which even ...
read more "Unity Makes Strength?"
Photo: Sophie Binet, General Secretary of the CGT, Laurent Berger, General Secretary of the CFDT and Marylise Leon, Deputy General Secretary of the CFDT, demonstrate together against the pension reform at the 1 May demonstration in Paris.
Photo: Sophie Binet, General Secretary of the CGT, Laurent Berger, General Secretary of the CFDT and Marylise Leon, Deputy General Secretary of the CFDT,
***Version française ci-dessous***   Due to dwindling membership and internal divisions, the decline of French trade unions long seemed inevitable. Against this backdrop, the unity demonstrated by the so-called intersydicale since the beginning of the massive protests against the pension reform, as well as internal renewal processes are historic in many respects. Is tradeunionism in France experiencing a renaissance? For the first time in decades, this year’s May Day celebrations brought all of France’s trade union confederations together in a major ...
read more "The Paradox of French Labour"
Protest in Paris, on the occasion of the eleventh nationwide day of action against the pension bill
Protest in Paris, on the occasion of the eleventh nationwide day of action against the pension billIMAGO / Le Pictorium
Two months into the battle over Macron’s pension reform, is the movement closer to victory? ****Version française ci-dessous**** The pension reform was supposed to be the landmark measure of Emmanuel Macron’s second term. After failing in his first attempt in 2020 following two months of strikes and blocked debates in the National Assembly and then the arrival of COVID, the French President was determined to see this reform to the end. Fervently requested by the European Commission, this reform is of major political importance for ...
read more "Inside France’s Social and Political Explosion"
A demonstrator in Paris protests against Emmanuel Macron's use of Article 49-3 to pass the pension reform
A demonstrator in Paris protests against Emmanuel Macron's use of Article 49-3 to pass the pension reformIMAGO / NurPhoto

One against All?

Zakaria Bendali & Gala Kabbaj
Macron’s deeply unpopular pension reform seems set to pass, but the fight isn’t over yetThe last few weeks have seen over 1 million French citizens take to the streets against the government’s planned pension reform. Most of the political parties and France’s trade union movement, not to mention over 90 percent of the active population, stand opposed to the reform, but French president Emmanuel Macron continues to press on with it. How did we get here, and what comes next? Gala Kabbaj and Zakaria Bendali  are both researchers with the collective Quantité Critique....
read more "One against All?"
Youth Organisations And Left-wing Parties Call For March For Our Pensions Demonstrators, including one holding a sign wi
Youth Organisations And Left-wing Parties Call For March For Our Pensions Demonstrators, including one holding a sign wiwww.imago-images.de

Macron Makes a Power Move

Ethan Earle
The French president’s deeply unpopular pension reform could make or break his administration Thursday, 19 January 2023 was a historic day in France, with well over 1 million people turning out in the streets as part of a nationwide strike to protest proposed reforms to the country’s vaunted pension system. Sound familiar? It should, because a similar reform proposed by President Emmanuel Macron was blocked by popular protest just a few years ago. The exact crowd numbers are disputed, as always, with the police estimating 1.12 million, while the Confédération...
read more "Macron Makes a Power Move"
***Version française ci-dessous*** On Sunday 19 June, a long electoral sequence in France that began on 10 April during the first round of the presidential election ended. Although this first election only had one winner, Emmanuel Macron re-elected in the second round against Marine Le Pen, the tripartition that has worked the political field since 2017 was heavily reflected in the results and now structures a national assembly divided between the group Ensemble, the Nupes and the RN. Also, The Republicans were more resilient than in the ...
read more "The Re-Parlamentarization of French Politics"