In March 2025 Marine Le Pen was convicted at first instance of embezzling European parliamentary funds through a fake jobs scam involving her far-right party the Front National, now called Rassemblement National. She was immediately banned from seeking public office for five years, thus scuppering her chances of contesting the 2027 French presidential election. On Tuesday January 13th a court in Paris will start hearing her appeal, in which her aim is to get that immediate ban lifted.
On Friday a majority of European Union states voted to accept the Mercosur free trade deal despite opposition from France. Yet the climatic and environmental impacts of this agreement with the South American nations involved are profound: an increase in CO2 emissions, deforestation, higher sales of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, and more animal exploitation. All this represents a series of setbacks for the planet's ecology, writes Mediapart's environment editor.
In January 2021 the humanitarian vessel Ocean Viking docked in Italy. On board were 374 migrants who had been rescued while trying to make the perilous trip across the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Europe. One of those plucked from the sea, Laureine from Cameroon, has lived in France ever since. But her two young daughters had stayed behind with a relative. They later took the huge risk of making the crossing themselves to rejoin their mother. Mediapart spent Christmas with them in their flat in Nice.
The film co-produced by Mediapart, now available through VOD.
As the abduction of the Venezuelan president has shown, Donald Trump’s expansionist and neo-reactionary policy is an assault on every citizen of the planet, writes Mediapart's publishing editor in this op-ed article. As their leaders abandon them, the citizens of European societies have no choice but to rally to defend their principles of equality and social justice.
France's president Emmanuel Macron has endorsed - without the slightest reservation - the military operation carried out by Donald Trump to seize Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. In doing so, argues Mediapart's political correspondent in this op-ed article, he has trampled over every principle on which French diplomacy has historically been based. Chief among these is the country's attachment to international law.
In a recent book, French historian Sabine Dullin argues that the way Vladimir Putin wields power - and his war of aggression in Ukraine – is rooted in methods of Russian rule developed over several centuries. The academic says with that the exception of some brief interludes, in Russia “autocracy and empire have fed off one another”. Mediapart looks at the lessons to be learnt from her analysis of Russia's past and present regimes.
The Garden and the Jungle How the West Sees the World
Edwy Plenel’s far-ranging critique of Europe’s betrayal of universal values and equal rights as war and right-wing populism spread worldwide.
France's head of state sought to put himself front and centre stage when delivering the traditional presidential New Year address to the nation on December 31st. “This will be a productive year,” promised Emmanuel Macron. Yet as Mediapart's political correspondent here explains, the president's room for manoeuvre both domestically and abroad is shrinking as fast as the approach of the end of his second five-year term.
After several months of preparation work, on December 24th the Algerian Parliament adopted a law which criminalises France's colonisation of the North African country and calls for reparations. Paris sees the move as another diplomatic affront amid the ongoing crisis in relations between the two countries. But as Driss Rejichi explains, this legislation is part of a wider movement across Africa seeking restorative justice.
Brigitte Bardot, who died on Sunday at her home in Saint-Tropez at the age of 91, was French cinema’s first “superstar”, once regarded as an icon of women’s liberation in conservative, pre-May 1968 France. Despite having an influence in the modernisation of French society, she would reject the feminist cause and took up that of animal rights after she left acting in 1973, and became close to the far-right in her later years. To better understand Bardot’s chequered life, Mediapart turned to Émilie Giaime, a senior lecturer in contemporary history and the media at the Catholic Institute of Paris, who argues that Bardot served as “the accelerator” of a new era of modernity in France, “both capitalist and hyper-mediatised”.
The activities of organised crime gangs in Corsica have long gangrened society on the French Mediterranean island, where intimidation tactics and their imposed law of silence have allowed corruption to flourish. But now, a growing “anti-mafia” movement, made up of an alliance of associations that for most were created in anger at the murders of whistleblowers, is gaining ground. Yet despite the success of their protest marches, the issue of cracking down on the criminal gangs and clans is largely absent from the agendas of the municipal elections due in March, to the relief of some.
