France news and discussions

[Time_Traveller]

France's Macron says schools will be 'intractable' in enforcing ban on robes often worn by Muslims

22 hours ago

French students won’t get past the door if they show up for school wearing long robes, President Emmanuel Macron made clear Friday, saying authorities would be “intractable” in enforcing a new rule when classes resume next week.

French Education Minister Gabriel Attal announced at a news conference four days ago that robes worn mainly by Muslims, known as abayas for girls and women and khamis for boys and men, would be banned with the start of the new school year on Monday.

Macron addressed the dress code for the first publicly after visiting a professional school in the Vaucluse region of southern France

“We know there will be cases” of students testing the rule, the president said, including ones trying to “defy the republican system.” Macron said they would not be able to slip into class, stressing that “we will be intractable on the subject.”

The education minister described girls and boys wearing the robes in junior high and high school as “an infringement on secularism,” a foundational principle for France. He accused some students of using the traditional attire to try to destabilize schools.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/emma ... 03537.html

[firestar464]

macron wtf

[Powers]

macron wtf

6-8 years too late

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

France mobilises 7,000 troops for extra security patrols
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/fr ... 023-10-14/


Reuters
October 14, 20233:27 AM EDT Updated 4 hours ago

PARIS, Oct 14 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered 7,000 soldiers to be mobilised for increased security patrols, his office said on Saturday, a day after a teacher was stabbed to death in an Islamist attack.

France was put on its highest security alert on Friday after a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed a teacher and gravely wounded two other people in an attack at a school in the city of Arras in northern France.

Macron's office said that the soldiers would be mobilised by Monday evening until further notice as part of an ongoing operation that regularly conducts patrols in major city centres and tourist sites.

The security alert comes as France hosts the Rugby World Cup and prepares to face South Africa on Saturday evening in their quarter-final.

[weatheriscool]

[caltrek]

^^^More on that:

Macron Starts Overhaul as French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne Resigns
by Victor Goury-Laffont
January 8, 2024

Introduction:

(Politico) PARIS — French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne resigned Monday ahead of a long-awaited reshuffle, the French presidency announced — but the composition of President Emmanuel Macron’s next government remains uncertain.

Borne, the second woman to serve as prime minister after Edith Cresson under François Mitterrand, will stay on to handle current affairs until a new government is appointed.

Macron is looking to revive his second term after 2023 was hampered by mass protests against his government’s pension reform, urban riots and an immigration law debacle. Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau exited in protest in December and other leading left-leaning Cabinet members voiced their concerns as the government gave in to hard-line conservatives on points including limiting access to state benefits for recently arrived immigrants and a reform of birthright citizenship.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen voted in favor of the bill and claimed “an ideological victory” for her movement.

Ahead of the reshuffle, Macron’s third since his reelection in 2022, the French president postponed the year’s first planned Cabinet meeting, fueling rumors of an upcoming change in governance.

Read more here: https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanu ... resigns/

[weatheriscool]

Gabriel Attal becomes France's youngest and first openly gay prime minister
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/09/europe/g ... index.html

Gabriel Attal, the 34-year-old French education minister, has been named the country’s new prime minister, a history-making appointment by President Emmanuel Macron as he looks to jumpstart his government’s flagging popularity.

Attal will be France’s youngest-ever prime minister and the first openly gay man to serve in the post – making him one of the world’s most prominent and powerful LGBTQ politicians.

Attal, a rising star in Macron’s Renaissance Party, has served as minister of education and national youth since July. During his tenure, he enacted a controversial ban on the wearing of the abaya in French public schools and has worked on raising awareness of bullying in schools.

[Time_Traveller]

France warns farmers that blocking Paris market will be red line in protest

Mon 29 Jan 2024 18.20 GMT

France has told its farmers that any action to block access to Paris’s main market for fresh food would be crossing a red line as a tractor protest made good on a threat to blockade the city for an indefinite period, stopping traffic on eight main motorways into the capital in a row over regulations, pay and taxes.

As it became clear the farmers planned to encircle the city, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, held a crisis meeting with key cabinet ministers on what was being called “Operation Paris Siege”. Prisca Thevenot, a government spokesperson, said announcements would be made on Tuesday. “The whole government and the president are mobilised,” she said.

The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said 15,000 police and gendarmes had been mobilised to prevent the tractors from entering Paris and other cities where protests were happening, and to keep access open to Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport north of the city and Orly airport in the south, as well as the region’s main fresh food market at Rungis, the largest in Europe. He warned farmers that blocking Rungis, which supplies 60% of Paris’s fresh food to about 12 million people, would be crossing a red line.

The first motorway barrage was reported shortly before 2pm when 30 tractors blocked the A4 20 miles east of Paris in both directions. Shortly afterwards, the A13 about 35 miles north-west of Paris was blocked in the direction of the capital. Tractors were reported to have blocked other main routes into and out of the city, forcing motorists to use increasingly congested side roads.

By Monday evening, there were 97 miles (156km) of traffic jams reported on the motorways. The National Federation for Road Transport confirmed that the blockages had hit deliveries but it was too early to quantify the impact. It stressed the importance of protecting transporters and their goods as well as the right for them to circulate.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... ade-threat

[caltrek]

The French Farmers’ Protests are More Complex Than They Seem
by Ellen Iaones
February 3, 2024

Introduction:

(Vox) French farmers’ unions on Thursday called a halt to protests in which they’ve blocked traffic with their tractors and dumped manure and rotting produce in front of government buildings to make their point. The message: They can no longer earn a living due to cheap imports, a lack of subsidies, and increased production costs.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced a series of concessions, including an agreement not to import agricultural products that use pesticides banned in the EU as well as new financial subsidies and tax breaks. The new policies have — for now — appeased France’s two largest agricultural unions, the Young Farmers and the FNSEA (the French acronym for the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions).

While farmers throughout Europe have been protesting poor wages and bureaucratic policy within their own countries and the EU, the French context is slightly different from other countries. It’s partly because of France’s self-conception and the place of agriculture within its national consciousness, but also because of France’s politics, specifically President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopularity.

France’s farmers seem to have won a victory, but agriculture workers in Germany, Belgium, and other European countries have taken their frustration to the European Union headquarters in Brussels, where the European Commission held a summit Thursday. Some experts have linked the movement with Euroskepticism, a political movement that questions the usefulness of the European Union and often pushes individual countries to leave it. But while there are some shades of that philosophy in the protest movement, there’s more nuance and complexity to farmers’ frustrations — and more of a desire for French influence in the EU.

French farmers’ concerns are somewhat specific to their own agricultural and political tradition, and they reflect a wide range of interests. Some farmers, like a small, un-unionized group in Toulouse credited with starting the highway blockades, claimed their victory last week when the government announced a slate of reforms, including easing regulations around building water reservoirs, compensating farmers for crops lost due to disease, and backpedaling on a proposed diesel fuel price hike.

Read more here: https://www.vox.com/2024/2/3/24059767/ ... -brussels