France

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Elecciones en Francia: 5 puntos clave de los resultados

      by

      Fue una jornada de sorpresas en el país europeo, con un inesperado triunfo de la izquierda, una extrema derecha muy por debajo de los pronósticos y la incógnita de quién será el próximo primer ministro.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]De manera inesperada, los partidos de izquierda franceses se impusieron en las elecciones legislativas celebradas el domingo en todo el país, con lo que el partido nacionalista y antiinmigración Agrupación Nacional no obtuvo la mayoría en la cámara baja del Parlamento.Ningún partido, sin embargo, parecía con posibilidades de conseguir la mayoría absoluta, lo que deja a uno de los países más grandes de Europa encaminado a un marasmo político o a la inestabilidad.Los resultados, recopilados por The New York Times a partir de datos del Ministerio del Interior, confirman las proyecciones anteriores, según las cuales ningún partido o bloque obtendría la mayoría.Aquí presentamos cinco conclusiones de las elecciones.Gran sorpresa número 1Se produjeron dos grandes sorpresas en las elecciones anticipadas al Parlamento francés, ninguna de ellas prevista por expertos, encuestadoras o analistas.La mayor fue el triunfo de la izquierda: su coalición obtuvo 178 escaños y se convirtió en el principal bloque político del país. Fue la victoria más sorprendente de la izquierda francesa desde que François Mitterrand la sacó de la marginalidad de la posguerra, y ganó la presidencia como socialista en 1981.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      French 2024 Parliamentary Election Results in Maps and Charts

      by

      No party secured an absolute majority in legislative elections on Sunday, leaving France headed for gridlock or political instability.Support for left-wing parties surged unexpectedly in nationwide legislative elections on Sunday, pushing the nationalist, anti-immigration National Rally into third place.The electoral map showed enduring divisions — with Paris and its suburbs voting for the left and center, and the regions in the far north and south along the Mediterranean voting for the far right.The country’s political outlook appeared more muddled than before, with three large political blocs, each with a vastly different vision and plan for the country. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      The Windmills Are Back Up on the Moulin Rouge

      by

      The Paris landmark has completed its restoration after the blades fell off this spring — and just in time for the Summer Olympic Games to begin.The moulin is back. The rouge never left.The Moulin Rouge, the famed Paris cabaret, has restored its iconic windmill after its blades broke and fell to the ground in April. The construction was finished weeks before the Paris Olympics are set to begin — and before the flame passes by on its relay route through Paris on July 15.“We wanted to be ready for this special moment,” said Jean-Victor Clerico, the managing director, whose family has run the cabaret since 1955, adding, “The Moulin Rouge without the blades? It’s not the same.”The cabaret, whose name means “red windmill” in French, has stayed open through the repairs. But it had stood functionally topless since April, when parts of the lettering also fell. No one was injured; a spokeswoman blamed a mechanical problem.Sympathy poured in from around the world, Mr. Clerico said. Fans sent in letters of support, he said. Some even wrote poems. For two months, the Moulin Rouge raced to remount the aluminum blades, pushing a metalwork company to work quickly to meet their deadline.Finally, right on schedule, the cabaret celebrated its full return to glory on Friday evening with a street show. As the bright neon lights on the windmill flicked back on, a crowd of about 1,500 people burst into cheers, Mr. Clerico said.Dancers performed the cancan — an emblem of the city, and of the cabaret culture epitomized by the Moulin Rouge — in blue, white and red costumes. They yipped and kicked, rustling their ruffles and shaking their skirts. Mr. Clerico said that the outdoor show was only the second time that the cabaret put on a cancan on the street. (The first was on its 130th anniversary in 2019.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      France’s Snap Election Enters Its Final Hours

      by

      The vote will determine the composition of France’s National Assembly, and the future of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term.Voters in France will cast ballots on Sunday in the final round of snap legislative elections. The results could force President Emmanuel Macron to govern alongside far-right opponents or usher in chronic political instability weeks before the Paris Summer Olympics.Mr. Macron called the elections for the 577-seat National Assembly, France’s lower and more prominent house of Parliament, last month in a risky gamble that appeared to have largely backfired after the first round of voting last week.Most polls close at 6 p.m. local time on Sunday, or as late as 8 p.m. in larger cities. Nationwide seat projections by polling institutes, based on preliminary results, are expected just after 8 p.m. Official results will come in throughout the night.Here is what to watch for.Will the far right win enough seats for an absolute majority?That will be the key question.The first round of voting was dominated by the nationalist, anti-immigration National Rally party. An alliance of left-wing parties called the New Popular Front came in a strong second, while Mr. Macron’s party and its allies came in third.Seventy-six seats were won outright — roughly half by the National Rally. But the rest went to runoffs.Over 300 districts were three-way races until over 200 candidates from left-wing parties and Mr. Macron’s centrist coalition pulled out to avoid splitting the vote and try to prevent the far right from winning.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Mythical Sword’s Disappearance Brings Mystery to French Village

      by

      Legend says the Durandal sword had been stuck in a French hillside for nearly 1,300 years. When it went missing in June, an investigation to find France’s Excalibur began.As legend has it, a sword from God given to Roland, an 8th century military leader under Charlemagne, was so powerful that Roland’s last mission was to destroy it.When the blade, called Durandal, proved indestructible, Roland threw it as far as he could, and it sailed over 100 miles before slicing through the side of a rock face in the medieval French village of Rocamadour.That sword, as the story goes, sat wedged in the stone for nearly 1,300 years, and it became a landmark and tourist attraction in Rocamadour, a very small village in southwestern France, about 110 miles east of Bordeaux. So residents and officials there were stunned to discover late last month that the blade had vanished, according to La Dépêche du Midi, a French newspaper.An officer with France’s national police force in Cahors, a town 30 miles southwest of Rocamadour, said that the sword disappeared sometime after nightfall on June 21, and that the authorities opened an investigation after a passerby reported the next morning that it was missing.The officer, who declined to give his name, emphasized that the sword is “a copy,” but acknowledged that it had symbolic significance.He referred further questions to the office of the prosecutor of the republic in Cahors, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 238 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden was a winner, once. It’s a huge risk to assume he can win again | Zoe Williams

      by

      I remember when people thought the free world was in peril because its self-appointed leader didn’t have a big enough vocabulary. There were also rumblings that, at 56, he was past his prime. This was George W Bush.There was detailed analysis of his favourite words (“folk”, “folksy”), the span and structure of his sentences and what grade it would put him in at school. A lot of this information was passed by word of mouth, one person in 100 being online and telling everyone else, and none of us in the UK were sure what US grades meant, but we knew it didn’t put him in one of the high ones. Did he have the intelligence of a nine-year-old? A 14-year-old?It didn’t sound good, but it also wasn’t true; there was nothing wrong with Bush’s IQ. It was just an early iteration of the rightwing manoeuvre where they pretend to be thick, to make liberals sneer at them, then turn to the voters they want, who they have assumed are stupid (well, why aren’t they rich?), and say: “Look, this is what liberals think of you.” It was bold and it broke with the conventional wisdom that leaders acted like smart people you could look up to (Ronald Reagan notwithstanding).You could lose a lot of time wondering if Donald Trump is simply rebooting this provocative stupidity play, with extra panache and some sharks, or whether he really is as unintelligent as he sounds. But it doesn’t matter, because he’s never been anything but clear about what he wants: all that matters is whether or not he wins.Ironically, that was the rationale for Joe Biden running again. His age didn’t matter, nor his qualities; even his polling numbers didn’t count. He was the only person who could beat Trump because he was the only person who had ever beaten Trump and therefore he was the only person anyone could imagine beating Trump.Win-at-all-costs logic isn’t great for politics at the best of times. It strips everyone’s enthusiasm down to the bone as they jettison what matters to them for some hand-me-down formula of what it takes to win. They lumber towards the finish, thinking: well, it must be working for some people; let’s hope there are enough of them. And, fair play, sometimes there are. There were in the US in 2000.But what we are looking at is win-at-all-costs logic spliced with “the only thing I can imagine is a thing that has already happened”, to give the elemental principle: only a winner can win. You can throw any suggestion you like into this mix – a new perspective, new blood, someone younger, someone from a different social demographic or a different wing of the party – and you will always be referred back to the people who know how to win. What do they think? Thank you for your interest, but they would prefer a winner on this occasion. Where no winner is available, perhaps you would consider a winner’s wife?Maybe it seems presumptuous to worry about US politics, particularly now, when the UK has its own show to open, and so much sooner. Does it seem too soon, too nosy, to worry about France? Can we not just mind our own business, this of all weeks? Loth as I am to learn from anything, least of all history, this pattern of a deliberately, flamboyantly coarse and stupid right wing, petrifying its opposition into a stance so defensive that the only thing it knows how to fight is itself, is eerily familiar.The creed of winning is irritating because it’s circular and unaccountable: those who preach it often don’t win and they seldom reflect on whether they might not know how to win, instead blaming the people who didn’t want victory enough. But it’s dangerous, because it’s risk averse. And watching that risk aversion play out in Biden versus Trump makes you realise it’s incredibly risky. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      With Macron and Biden Vulnerable, So Is Europe

      by

      The U.S. presidential debate and Sunday’s snap election in France have emboldened nationalist forces that could challenge NATO and undo the defense of Ukraine.This month, President Biden, flanked by President Emmanuel Macron of France, stood on the Normandy bluffs to commemorate the young men who clambered ashore 80 years ago into a hail of Nazi gunfire because “they knew beyond any doubt there are things worth fighting and dying for.”Among those things, Mr. Biden said, were freedom, democracy, America and the world, “then, now and always.” It was a moving moment as Mr. Macron spoke of the “bond of blood” between France and America, but just a few weeks later, the ability of either leader to hold the line in defense of their values appears more fragile.The United States and France — pillars of the NATO alliance, of the defense of Ukraine’s freedom against Russia and of the postwar construction of a united Europe — face nationalist forces that could undo those international commitments and pitch the world into uncharted territory.A wobbly, wavering debate performance by Mr. Biden, in which he struggled to counter the dishonest bluster of former President Donald J. Trump, has spread panic among Democrats and raised doubts about whether he should even be on the ticket for the Nov. 5 election.Uncertainty is at a new high in the United States, as well as in a shaken, startled France.The country votes on Sunday in the first round of parliamentary elections called by Mr. Macron to the widespread astonishment of his compatriots. He had no obligation to do so at a time when the far-right National Rally, triumphant in recent European Parliament elections, seems likely to repeat that performance and so perhaps attain the once unthinkable: control of the French prime minister’s office and with it, cabinet seats.Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of the National Rally in Marseille in March. Mr. Bardella is likely to become prime minister if National Rally wins the election. Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      France’s Far-Right National Rally Rebranded Itself. Here’s How.

      by

      Many long considered Marine Le Pen’s party too extreme to be anywhere close to power. Now, the party could win a parliamentary election — and fill the prime minister’s seat.For decades, the National Rally was the pariah of French politics — deemed so dangerous that politicians from other parties refused to engage with its members. How much that has changed became starkly apparent this month: The R.N., as the party is known by its initials in French, dominated the elections for the European Parliament, crushing President Emmanuel Macron’s party and winning a third of the votes in France. Mr. Macron soon called a surprise snap election for the powerful National Assembly, and polls suggest that the National Rally might be poised to win those, too.Jordan Bardella, the party’s president, is jockeying to become the country’s next prime minister — something that just 10 years ago would have been unthinkable. He is scheduled to face off against two adversaries, including Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, in a much-anticipated debate on Tuesday night.If his party manages a big win in the election, Mr. Bardella could become prime minister, name cabinet members and derail much of Mr. Macron’s domestic agenda. (Historically, the president still sets foreign and defense policy.)How did the National Rally evolve, rebranding itself so fully that it is now closer than ever to such a position of power?The National Rally’s founder was openly racist.Originally called the National Front, the party was founded in 1972 as the political arm of New Order, whose members believed democracy was doomed to fail. It included former Nazi soldiers, Vichy régime collaborators and former members of a terrorist organization that carried out attacks to prevent Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More