Macron, Emmanuel (1977- )

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      ‘We Need to Unite’: Protests Against the Far Right Are Held Across France

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      A newly formed left-wing coalition called on demonstrators to stop Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party from taking power in upcoming elections.Tens of thousands of demonstrators crowded onto French streets on Saturday to denounce the rise of the country’s far-right political party and call on fellow citizens to block it from taking power in snap parliamentary elections set by President Emmanuel Macron.The protests, organized by the country’s five biggest labor unions, were widely supported by human rights associations, activists, artists and backers of a newly formed left-wing coalition of political parties, the New Popular Front. Most protesters painted a dark picture of the country under a far-right prime minister.“For the first time since the Vichy regime, the extreme right could prevail again in France,” Olivier Faure, the leader of the Socialist Party, said while addressing the crowd in Paris.That prospect brought out of retirement former President François Hollande, who announced on Saturday that he would run for legislative elections to help ensure that the far right would not take power.“The situation is very grave,” he said, in his hometown, Corrèze. “For those who feel lost, we need to convince them: The coming together of the French is indispensable.”Mr. Macron shocked the country last week by announcing that he was dissolving the lower house of Parliament and calling for new parliamentary elections after his centrist Renaissance party was clobbered by the far-right National Rally party in elections for the European Parliament.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

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      Macron’s Early Election Call After EU Vote Is a Huge Gamble

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      The president has challenged voters to test the sincerity of their support for the far right in European elections. Were the French letting off steam, or did they really mean it?On the face of it, there is little logic in calling an election from a position of great weakness. But that is what President Emmanuel Macron has done by calling a snap parliamentary election in France on the back of a humiliation by the far right.After the National Rally of Marine Le Pen and her popular protégé Jordan Bardella handed him a crushing defeat on Sunday in elections for the European Parliament, Mr. Macron might have done nothing, reshuffled his government, or simply altered course through stricter controls on immigration and by renouncing contested plans to tighten rules on unemployment benefits.Instead, Mr. Macron, who became president at 39 in 2017 by being a risk taker, chose to gamble that France, having voted one way on Sunday, will vote another in a few weeks.“I am astonished, like almost everyone else,” said Alain Duhamel, the prominent author of “Emmanuel the Bold,” a book about Mr. Macron. “It’s not madness, it’s not despair, but it is a huge risk from an impetuous man who prefers taking the initiative to being subjected to events.”Shock coursed through France on Monday. The stock market plunged. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, a city that will host the Olympic Games in just over six weeks, said she was “stunned” by an “unsettling” decision. “A thunderbolt,” thundered Le Parisien, a daily newspaper, across its front page.For Le Monde, it was “a jump in the void.” Raphaël Glucksmann, who guided the revived center-left socialists to third place among French parties in the European vote, accused Mr. Macron of “a dangerous game.”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

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      French-American Friendship in Four Courses

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      Under Emmanuel Macron, “culinary diplomacy” is back on the menu, with a lavish dinner fortifying an old alliance at a tense historical moment.Beneath the crystal chandeliers of the gilded reception hall of the Élysée Palace, opened in 1889 with a party for 8,000 people, President Emmanuel Macron of France hosted President Biden on Saturday night at a state dinner intended to celebrate a very old alliance and demonstrate that the bond is greater than its intermittent frictions.Mr. Biden, addressing the French leader as “Emmanuel,” rose from a long table adorned with a bouquet of pink peonies and roses to say that “France was our first ally, and that is not insignificant.” He cited a book titled “The Pocket Guide to France” that he said was distributed to the American forces who, eight decades ago, fought their way up the Normandy bluffs through a hail of Nazi gunfire to wrest Europe from tyranny.“No bragging,” Mr. Biden quoted the guide as saying, “the French don’t like that!” The book urged U.S. solders to be generous — “it won’t hurt you” — and said the French “happen to speak democracy in a different language, but we are all in the same boat.”That “same boat” of 1944 has repeatedly been invoked during Mr. Biden’s five-day visit to France as still existing today in the form of joint French and U.S. support for Ukraine in a battle against Russia defined as pivotal for the defense of European liberty. “We stand together when the going gets tough,” Mr. Biden said.The going was scarcely that at a sumptuous dinner served at tables set between the fluted columns of a room conceived a century after the French Revolution to project the glory of the Republic.Beneath golden caryatids and a painted ceiling medallion reading “The Republic safeguarding peace,” battalions of liveried waiters in white bow ties, bearing silver trays, served with impeccable precision a four-course meal accompanied by champagne and a 2006 Château Margaux that had taken 18 years to achieve perfection.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

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      President Macron Arrives in New Caledonia, French Territory on Brink of Civil War

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      New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific, is on the brink of civil war as pro-independence activists protest a law that would expand voting rights.President Emmanuel Macron of France has a lot to manage. The European elections are fast approaching, and his party is predicted to lose. There are the frenzied preparations for the Olympic Games in Paris. A manhunt is underway for a convict whose brazen and deadly jailbreak shocked the country.The last place many expected Mr. Macron to be was on a plane to one of France’s territories in the Pacific, where riots have exploded all week. But there he was, arriving in New Caledonia on Thursday with three ministers in tow, on a mission to heal and listen in a territory where many hold him personally responsible for the unrest.“I come here with determination to work toward restoring peace, with lots of respect and humility,” he said when he arrived.The riots were set off by the prospect of a vote last week in the National Assembly in Paris to expand voting rights in the territory. Many in the local Indigenous population worry that the law would hamper the long process toward independence.Mr. Macron planned to meet with local officials and civil-society activists, to thank the police and start a round of dialogue before quickly hopping back on a plane and returning more than 10,000 miles to mainland France.The trip, in many ways, is classic Macron. He feels that any dispute, no matter how heated, can be resolved through personal dialogue with him. But given the local distrust of the government, many believe his trip is not just short, but shortsighted.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

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      Macron Moves to Declare State of Emergency in New Caledonia

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      The French authorities have undertaken a “massive” mobilization of security forces since violent protests broke out over a constitutional amendment that changes voting rules in the South Pacific territory.Protesters burned cars and businesses in New Caledonia’s capital after France’s Parliament approved a change to the territory’s voting rules.Delphine Mayeur/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPresident Emmanuel Macron of France convened a crisis meeting on Wednesday and moved to declare a state of emergency in New Caledonia after deadly riots in the semiautonomous French Pacific territory that has long sought independence.The French authorities have undertaken what they called a “massive” mobilization of security forces since violent protests broke out in New Caledonia this week over a proposed amendment to the French Constitution that would change voting rules in the territory. A vote in France’s Parliament approving the amendment on Tuesday ignited riots overnight that left three people dead.Mr. Macron met Wednesday with his Defense and National Security Council about the situation, according to a statement from his office. It said he had expressed “strong emotion” over the deaths and gratitude to French security forces. It also said he had requested that a state of emergency be declared for the territory at the afternoon cabinet meeting.“All violence is intolerable and will be subject to a relentless response” to ensure that order is restored, the statement said, adding that Mr. Macron had welcomed appeals for calm from officials.France annexed New Caledonia, a smattering of islands with a population of about 270,000, in 1853. The prospect of independence has fueled decades of tensions in the territory.After armed conflict claimed dozens of lives there in the 1980s — an uprising known as “the Events” — the French government promised change. The territory has held three independence referendums since 2018; all have been voted down.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

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      In Meeting With Xi, E.U. Leader Takes Tough Line on Ukraine War

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      Ursula Von der Leyen, the European Commission president, pushed Beijing to help rein in Russia’s war in Ukraine after meeting with the Chinese and French leaders in Paris.Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, put pressure Monday on China to help resolve the war in Ukraine, saying Beijing should “use all its influence on Russia to end its war of aggression against Ukraine.”She spoke after accompanying President Emmanuel Macron of France in a meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, who began his first visit to Europe in five years on Sunday. Ms. von der Leyen has persistently taken a stronger line toward China than has Mr. Macron.With President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia again suggesting he might be prepared to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, she said Mr. Xi had played “an important role in de-escalating Russia’s irresponsible nuclear threats.” She was confident, Ms. von der Leyen said, that Mr. Xi would “continue to do so against the backdrop of ongoing nuclear threats by Russia.”Whether her appeal would have any impact on Mr. Xi was unclear, and describing the conflict as Russia’s “war of aggression” in Ukraine seemed likely to irk the Chinese leader. Beijing has forged a “no limits” friendship with Russia and provided Moscow with critical support for its military effort, including jet fighter parts, microchips and other dual-use equipment.“More effort is needed to curtail delivery of dual-use goods to Russia that find their way to the battlefield,” Ms. von der Leyen said of China. “And given the existential nature of the threats stemming from this war for both Ukraine and Europe, this does affect E.U.-China relations.”It is relatively unusual for a top European official to describe the war in Ukraine as an “existential threat” to the European continent. Doing so may reflect Mr. Putin’s renewed talk of the use of nuclear weapons.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

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      Rwanda Marks Anniversary of 1994 Genocide

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      The Central African country is marking the anniversary of a monthslong rampage by militiamen that killed some 800,000 people.When the marauding militiamen arrived at her door on that morning in April 1994, Florence Mukantaganda knew there was nowhere to run.It was only three days into the devastating 100-day genocide in Rwanda, when militiamen rampaged through the streets and people’s homes in a bloodshed that forever upended life in the Central African nation. As the men entered her home, Ms. Mukantaganda said her husband, a preacher, prayed for her and their two small children and furtively told her where he had hidden some money in case she survived.He then said his final words to her before he was hacked to death with a hoe.“He told me, ‘When they come for you, you have to be strong, you have to die strong,’” Ms. Mukantaganda, 53, recalled on a recent morning at her home in Kabuga, a small town about 10 miles east of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. “There was nothing we could do but wait for our time to die.”The agony of those harrowing days loomed large for many on Sunday as Rwanda marked the 30th anniversary of the genocide in which extremists from the country’s ethnic Hutu majority killed some 800,000 people — most of them ethnic Tutsis — using machetes, clubs and guns.“Today, our hearts are filled with grief and gratitude in equal measure,” President Paul Kagame said on Sunday at a ceremony at an indoor arena. “We remember our dead, and are also grateful for what Rwanda has become.”Representatives from regional and global institutions like the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations were present at the ceremony, as well as ministerial delegations and current and former leaders from some 60 nations.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

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      #MeToo Stalled in France. Judith Godrèche Might Be Changing That.

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      Judith Godrèche did not set out to relaunch the #MeToo movement in France’s movie industry.She came back to Paris from Los Angeles in 2022 to work on “Icon of French Cinema,” a TV series she wrote, directed and starred in — a satirical poke at her acting career that also recounts how, at the age of 14, she entered into an abusive relationship with a film director 25 years older than her.Then, a week after the show aired, in late December, a viewers’ message alerted her to a 2011 documentary that she says made her throw up and start shaking as if she were “naked in the snow.”There was the same film director, admitting that their relationship had been a “transgression” but arguing that “making films is a kind of cover” for forms of “illicit traffic.”She went to the police unit specialized in crimes against children — its waiting room was filled with toys and a giant teddy bear, she recalls — to file a report for rape of a minor.“There I was,” said Ms. Godrèche, now 52, “at the right place, where I’ve been waiting to be since I was 14.”Since then, Ms. Godrèche has been on a campaign to expose the abuse of children and women that she believes is stitched into the fabric of French cinema. Barely a week has gone by without her appearance on television and radio, in magazines and newspapers, and even before the French Parliament, where she demanded an inquiry into sexual violence in the industry and protective measures for children.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