Macron

As France prepares to enter its third week of confinement the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, has warned that ‘the fight has only just begun’. Coronavirus has claimed 2,606 French lives to date, but at a press conference on Saturday evening Philippe said: ‘The first 15 days of April will be even more difficult than the last 15 days.’ Earlier in the week Philippe had praised the resolve of the vast majority for respecting the lockdown, and he urged France to hold the course while announcing that the confinement will continue until at least April 15. ‘This struggle will last,’ he said. ‘We will only win by being disciplined and observing

In France there is a palpable sense of administrative and political panic in how to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. As I write from Perpignan on the French-Spanish border on the morning of 24 March, France has 19,856 coronavirus cases and 860 deaths; Britain 6,650 and 335. After Italy and Spain, France is the third worst affected country in Europe (Germany has more cases because it tests more, but only 123 deaths), but it has imposed and enforced the most severe lockdown. France went into lockdown on 17 March. The administrative state immediately generated an array of bureaucratic forms: a certificate to leave your house to walk the dog or go shopping; a

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across Europe, the United States has reduced its participation in a Nato military exercise that was set to be one of the alliance’s largest since the end of the Cold War. In April and May, the Defender-Europe 20 exercise was meant to feature 37,000 troops from 18 countries, including 20,000 soldiers deployed from the United States. It was planned to take place across ten European countries, with the bulk of the drills in Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states. Shortly after the WHO declared that Europe had become the new ‘epicentre of the pandemic’, the Trump administration enacted a travel ban for foreign visitors from

Looming behind the Frost-Barnier negotiations is a battle between London and Paris as financial centres. After the June 2016 referendum, the French failed miserably to seduce City institutions away from the UK. There was no exodus from London, and of those few relocations to the continent, most avoided Paris, preferring to scatter widely from Dublin to Frankfurt and Amsterdam.  After failing in the first instance, the French will now attempt to do so by force under the cover of the EU negotiations. The strategy of Macron and his ambitious Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, will be to ensure Europe does not recognise passporting for British banks, that Euro-denominated transactions are

Emmanuel Macron lost his cool during a walkabout in Jerusalem’s Old City on Tuesday and television cameras captured the moment for posterity. “Everybody knows the rules,” shouted the president of France, directing his wrath at Israeli security officials. “I don’t like what you did in front of me. Go outside!” The confrontation took place outside the Church of Saint Anne, a possession of the French government which is regarded as French territory. According to reports Macron snapped when Israeli security men attempted to accompany him into the church. It’s not the first time that a French president has had a fit of Gallic pique in Jerusalem; Jacques Chirac famously clashed