Macron

Accounts differ. But it would appear that during a wide-ranging conference call earlier this week, the leaders of France and Germany broached the possibility of – wait for it – buying some of Russia’s pandemic pride and joy: its Sputnik V vaccine. If a deal is struck this would be a huge boost to Russia at home and abroad, and by extension to President Putin, who has spent months trying to dispel widespread Western suspicions about the Russian vaccine, from its Soviet-era name to the breakneck speed of its development. Any deal would also represent quite a turnaround for France and Germany, whose leaders have spearheaded a Continental European reluctance

The number of Brits who have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine hit 9.2million yesterday. But not everyone is impressed at the pace of the rollout. Step forward, France’s Europe minister, Clément Beaune, who has followed the example set by his boss Emmanuel Macron in criticising the British approach. The UK has taken ‘a lot of risks’ in its vaccine programme, Beaune told reporters:  ‘The British are in an extremely difficult health situation. They are taking many risks in this vaccination campaign. And I can understand it, but they are taking many risks. They have spaced – and the scientists have told us not to – they have

France is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council not to have developed a coronavirus vaccine, and it hurts. USA: two; UK: one; Russia: one; China: one, France nul points. To make matters worse, France also has an embarrassing international ranking in the number of its citizens it has vaccinated.  ‘France is the laughing stock of Europe’, cry a range of politicians and media. How is this possible in the land of Louis Pasteur, the French ask themselves? Even discounting Edward Jenner a century before Pasteur (whom France’s health minister graciously acknowledged), the French see this as the continuation of the country’s ‘déclassement’, a relentless historical decline from better days.

France has a problem when it comes to the coronavirus vaccine. Emmanuel Macron’s administration has so far only given out around 5,000 vaccines, and France has one of the lowest levels of trust in the coronavirus vaccine in the world, with only 40 per cent of the public saying they want to be inoculated. Faced with this trust deficit, Macron has proposed a 35-member ‘citizen panel’ to oversee France’s vaccination programme. The body, made up of a random selection of French citizens, will be responsible for monitoring and advising the government when it comes to the vaccine roll-out. Vaccines are the perfect storm for distrust of public authorities. Each recipient

Emmanuel Macron was not quite his cock-a-doodle-do self in his New Year’s Eve broadcast to the French people. This, the fourth presidential broadcast of the plague year, saw Macron, in black suit and black tie, resembling a small-town funeral director attempting to conjure optimism. Macron promised a France on the comeback by the spring, with new economy jobs and a European recovery fostered by an ever more ambitious European Union. The reality is that much of the country is under a 6pm curfew. Everywhere, bars, restaurants and ski resorts are shut. Pension reform has gone. Unemployment, deficit and debt are massively up. There’s been close to a 10 per cent

The Elysée palace has just confirmed that French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for Covid-19, after developing symptoms this week. In a statement, the palace said the President had been tested ‘as soon as the first symptoms appeared’ and will now be self-isolating for the next seven days. It’s not yet clear how badly Macron has been affected by the disease, nor when he was infected. One can only wish him the best of health in the coming days. But Mr Steerpike couldn’t also help noticing, while looking through recent photos of EU meetings, that Macron’s positive test may pose some practical difficulties for EU leaders… In recent weeks

Politicians whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make ridiculous. On Tuesday evening, as the deaths attributed to Covid-19 reached 50,000, Emmanuel Macron, president of the Republic, again commandeered French television channels to announce his latest strategy to end the national lockdown. He claimed to be making himself perfectly clear as his timetable for ending lockdown was conditioned by the subjunctive. The big give was that from Saturday, we are to be allowed to spend three hours daily outside, and to venture 20km (no more) from our front doors. (This will be a relief to a friend in the Dordogne who was ‘verbalisé’ by the flics last week when

The war of words between Pakistan and France – sparked by president Macron’s comments about radical Islam – rumbles on. But the latest skirmish has led to an embarrassing climbdown from one of Pakistan’s top politicians. ‘Macron is doing to Muslims what the Nazis did to the Jews – Muslim children will get ID numbers (other children won’t) just as Jews were forced to wear the yellow star on their clothing for identification,’ wrote Pakistan’s federal minister for human rights Shireen Mazari. Mazari’s tweet was quickly picked up by those who have suggested there is something sinister to Macron’s recent interventions. But there was a problem: it was nonsense. France soon hit back,

Will the presidency of Emmanuel Macron open the door to a political dynasty in France? He has no children, so that’s a problem. But wait. There’s Brigitte Macron, who has three. Albeit, all from the union she abandoned to marry Emmanuel, her pupil. Meet the youngest of Mme Macron’s three children, Tiphaine Auzière, 36, a lawyer, social entrepreneur, and République En Marche activist. Merely six years younger than Macron himself, Tiphaine is the striking cover girl (alongside her mum, the First Lady of France) of Paris Match magazine this week. And it doesn’t take profound insight to imagine that with important regional elections next year, she’s running for something. At

One of the persistent misconceptions of the riots that swept through France in the autumn of 2005 is that they were solely the result of the deaths of two youths as they ran from the police. The deaths of the teenagers on October 27 in Clichy-Montfermeil provoked unrest in the north-eastern Parisian suburb but it was what happened three days later that led to three weeks of nationwide riots and the declaration of a state of emergency by the then president of France, Jacques Chirac. According to Gilles Kepel in his 2015 book, Terror in France: genesis of the French Jihad, it was a stray tear gas grenade fired by

On Saturday night France’s Prime Minister spoke to the French people flanked by the Health Minister, the Director General of Health (DGS) and three epidemiologists, to reassure the public that the government would be more transparent about the spread of coronavirus. Despite President Macron’s increasing media appearances in the ‘war on corona’ a 25 March opinion poll showed 90 per cent of the French public are anxious, 39 points more than on 11 March before the lockdown. Although 64 per cent claimed their morale was holding up, 56 per cent said they had lost faith in the executive’s management of the crisis. This is very different to a poll on