France on the edge
REUTERS
A breath of fresh air?Back in April, EU heads of state and government agreed a coronavirus rescue package worth over €500 billion for the countries hardest hit by the crisis. However, the support in this package only took the form of low-interest loans. Now, though, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have presented a plan for a further €500-billion recovery fund that would see aid issued to Member States as grants rather than as repayable loans. Moreover – and this is the most remarkable feature of their proposal – the plan would be ...
read more "Merkel and Macron"
read more "Merkel and Macron"
President Macron has acknowledged the link between Covid and the climate crisis, and the need for largescale measures in response. Emerging alliances demand that he move beyond lofty rhetoric, and that the French government take up the challenge of the socio-ecological transformation the moment demands.
The world is currently facing a pandemic crisis in the form of the coronavirus, and France is one of the most affected countries with more than 130.000 cases and 24.000 deaths as of this writing. The Gilets Jaunes slogan comparing the end of ...
read more "Covid crisis, climate crisis – same struggle"
read more "Covid crisis, climate crisis – same struggle"
From the pension reform attempt to the coronavirus crisis, the events of recent months have revealed a trade union movement that is weakened but still fighting hard to break with increasingly apparent 'neoliberal disorder'. Where does the French labour movement head from here?
***version française ci-dessous***
The anti-pension-reform movement was still going strong when the decision was taken to put France into lockdown.[1] Though the government sought to use the coronavirus as an opportunity to rush through its pension reform ...
read more "The French Labour Movement on the Hot Seat"
read more "The French Labour Movement on the Hot Seat"
Frontline nurses and hospital personnel share a sense of solidarity and purpose, but with their battle against the Coronavirus hampered by years of budget cuts and disinvestment, their concerns are beginning to grow.
As a nurse in the infectious disease ward of a major Paris hospital, Marie is on the frontlines of the battle against Covid-19. Over the past few weeks, dozens of new patients with the virus have arrived to her unit, medical students and nurses from other wards have been called in as reinforcements, and strict new precautionary ...
read more "French Hospital Workers Battle Coronavirus"
read more "French Hospital Workers Battle Coronavirus"
Quick! Are there other lives?
— Sleep in wealth is impossible.
Wealth has always been public property.
~ Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
*** traduction en français ci-dessus***
Across France, huge numbers of people are taking to the streets to push for the withdrawal of the proposed pension reform. Meanwhile another reform was adopted just a few months earlier. While these unemployment-insurance cuts attracted less attention, they represents a similarly flagrant attack on workers’ ...
read more "Fewer rights and greater precarity following unemployment-insurance reform in France"
read more "Fewer rights and greater precarity following unemployment-insurance reform in France"
Commentary by the CGT on the use of Article 49-3By Catherine Perret, Confederal Secretary of the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and author of our recent article describing the proposed reforms: An attack on the solidarity-based system.
Article 49-3 of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic allows the French government to govern by decree, bypassing the National Assembly. On 29 February 2020, the French government announced it would employ Article 49-3 to move its pension reform bill directly to the Senate – the first time this...
read more "”An outright subversion of democracy”"
read more "”An outright subversion of democracy”"
I have swallowed a monstrous dose of poison.
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
France’s forthcoming municipal elections mark the opening of a cycle that ends with presidential and parliamentary contests in 2022, following next year’s departmental and regional elections. Half a million local councillors in around 35,000 constituencies are going to be elected on 15 and 22 March, a major test of party organisation and local roots. Local success can provide a platform for smaller, newer or outsider parties to ...
read more "Islands of reaction: the far-right and France’s local elections"
read more "Islands of reaction: the far-right and France’s local elections"
«We want to continue our efforts to keep Paris affordable for the poorest Parisians and the middle classes»Ian Brossat, aged 39, is a professor of modern literature who formerly taught in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles. In 2014 he was elected as deputy mayor of Paris, in charge of housing and emergency accommodation. He is also a national spokesperson for the French Communist Party (PCF).
In this mid-February interview, he sat down with Ethan Earle to discuss the French municipal elections taking place in March, ...
read more "Interview with Ian Brossat, Deputy Mayor of Paris in Charge of Housing"
read more "Interview with Ian Brossat, Deputy Mayor of Paris in Charge of Housing"
An interview with André Chassaigne, Member of France’s National AssemblyAndré Chassaigne is a communist member of parliament representing the Puy de Dôme department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. He has been a member of the French National Assembly since 2002 and has headed the Democratic and Republican Left group, made up of 16 members of parliament, since 2012.
In this mid-January interview, he sat down with A Season in Hell Editor Ethan Earle to discuss Emmanuel Macron’s proposed pension reform, the strike and the popular ...
read more "“There is so much more to us than opposition”"
read more "“There is so much more to us than opposition”"
In a handful of cities across France, left-wing parties are setting aside their differences and running united tickets in March’s municipal elections. But tensions and uncertainties never linger far from the surface.
In cities, suddenly, the mud seemed red and black
like a mirror when the lamp moves about in the adjoining room,
like a treasure in the forest!
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
The French Left has seen better days.
Since the election of President Emmanuel Macron in 2017, the country’s smorgasbord of left-wing ...
read more "Storming City Hall"
read more "Storming City Hall"