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Harrison Stetler is a freelance journalist and teacher based in Paris.
On Friday, France’s Constitutional Council upheld Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular pension reform. The move shows the bankruptcy of a constitution that puts only minimal checks on the president’s power.
Most French people oppose raising the pension age, and there was no parliamentary majority for the change. While the reform has now been railroaded through the National Assembly, mobilized opponents see a chance to finish off an unpopular government.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise claimed to replace old political parties using ad hoc structures based on “consensus.” But battles over its post-Mélenchon future have pitched this model into crisis — and show the need for real democratic structures.
Emmanuel Macron’s government is giving French police more powers to issue on-the-spot fines, without going to court. France’s justice system is less and less based on a presumption of innocence — and multicultural, working-class areas are being targeted most.
Authoritarian governments like those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia have funded a boom in France’s arms industry. Now, with war in Ukraine, it’s setting its sights on rearming Europe.
A strike at France’s oil refineries is demanding pay raises that reflect firms’ soaring profits. Liberal president Emmanuel Macron’s government is forcing employees back to work — but unions insist they’ll defend their right to strike.
France’s liberal president, Emmanuel Macron, spent his first term attacking key planks of the French welfare model. Now, he’s launching another war on pensions.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address this week marked a small step away from austerity dogmas. But the EU isn’t facing up to the vast fallout of the mounting energy crisis.
French tycoons face rising scrutiny over their use of private jets for even the shortest flights. Business lobby group MEDEF’s summit struck down all criticism of the superrich — and set out plans for an energy transition that puts their interests first.
French media is ever more prey to billionaire owners and the far-right pundits they promote. Public service broadcasters offer a more balanced alternative — but now Emmanuel Macron’s government is threatening their future existence.
Recent years have seen growing calls for more accountable law enforcement in France — and an intense backlash from police unions. As the country votes in parliamentary elections, police leaders are openly refusing to accept the Left’s legitimacy.
Emmanuel Macron has used the war in Ukraine to boost his credentials as a global statesman. Yet last week’s strike by the diplomatic corps shows how his neoliberal recipes have gutted the French state.
A new left-wing coalition is leading polls for June's French parliamentary elections. Its popularity shows that working-class France wants a government that resists Emmanuel Macron's destruction of the country's social welfare provisions.
Emmanuel Macron has hacked away at civil liberties, with heightened police repression and ministers promising to root out “Islamo-leftism.” Marine Le Pen would be much worse — she’ll wage all-out war on France’s democratic institutions.
France’s election campaign has seen growing calls for greater ecological planning. But if the green transition is not to impose austerity by other means, it has to be planned by working people themselves.
Ten days before the first round of France’s presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is steadily rising in polls. But divides on the French left risk letting the anti-immigrant Marine Le Pen beat him to the runoff.
France’s interior minister has announced plans to ban left-wing media platform Nantes Révoltée after it publicized an anti-fascist protest ending in a few broken windows. Based on guilt by association, the move is a troubling attack on press freedom.
The policing of protests in France has become so nakedly repressive that even the United Nations has denounced its excesses. But a new protocol shows that Emmanuel Macron’s administration has chosen to turn violent police tactics into the norm.
Last week, far-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour announced his bid for the French presidency. His first rally this past Sunday was a spectacle of fascist politics and dark references to “civil war.”
French president Emmanuel Macron’s bodyguard Alexandre Benalla has been handed a suspended sentence for violently beating protesters while posing as a cop. It’s a slap on the wrist in a country where elite impunity reigns.