Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.
Macron’s moves
A mostly terrifying week on the international stage began in Paris, where Emmanuel Macron hosted an urgent meeting of European leaders in response to the Trump administration’s moves on Ukraine.
Macron himself can lay a pretty good claim to telling his fellow European leaders ‘I told you so’, since he has after all been banging on about the need for Europe to take more responsibility for its own defence since 2017. Being right doesn’t necessarily make you the most popular kid in school, however, so the big question now is whether Europe will manage to work together in the face of the combined threat of Russian and the US.
On the face of it, Macron’s conference brought about little in the way of concrete results, although The Local’s politics expert John Lichfield argues that there is more going on behind the scenes. I sincerely hope that he is right.
Macron then spent an hour on Thursday evening in a live stream answering questions sent in by members of the public on the subject of Ukraine and European defence.
Je réponds en direct à vos questions sur l’Ukraine et la sécurité de l’Europe. https://t.co/kK7lsNWDQg
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 20, 2025
He seemed quite upbeat about the situation, with some welcome support for Volodymyr Zelensky, reminding viewers that Zelensky is “a president elected in a free system. This is not the case for Vladimir Putin, who has been killing his opponents and manipulating his elections for a long time.”
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Senate skullduggery
Things haven’t been much brighter on the domestic front, with the French Senate pushing ahead with two bills that could have a major negative impact on the lives of people in France.
One is to restrict marriage between French citizens and foreigners who are in an ‘irregular’ immigration situation, the other aims to ban women from wearing the hijab from playing any sport – professional or amateur.
Being passed in the Senate doesn’t mean that these will definitely become law, and contrary to what many believe it is in fact the Assemblée nationale that has the final say when the two houses of parliament don’t agree. It’s also highly likely that even if they were passed both would face a challenge at the Constitutional Council.
The attempted hijab ban is a long-standing obsession of the right-wing dominated Senate which has variously attempted to ban the wearing of the Muslim headscarf altogether, ban it for under 18s and ban mums from wearing it when accompanying school trips. They say that this is all in the name of laïcité – French state secularism – so it’s presumably just a coincidence that every measure they propose is about policing what women wear.
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Spring has sprung
And if all this news is just too depressing/horrifying – here is a picture of daffodils in bloom in the village in Charente where I have been staying this week.
Daffodils in bloom in mid February in Charente, south-west France. Photo: The Local
First daffodils are always, to me, a very cheering sight, and it got me to thinking about all those especially French signs of spring – from the start of the professional pétanque season to the switch to rosé wines.
10 signs that spring has arrived in France
And yes, professional pétanque is a thing although I’m not sure that it could ever beat the passion of the amateur game – some of my best French swearing was learned watching the over-80s pétanque tournaments in Paris.
The picture at the head of this piece shows furious pétanque players in Montmartre being dragged away by riot police – although in that case they were staging a protest about a threat to their club, it wasn’t a case of passions boiling over during the match.
Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.