🇫🇷Defending European values and interests
French citizens rally in defence of the rule of law, Emmanuel Macron appears “confident” on the Boualem Sansal dossier, and Macron positions himself on Trump tariff response
👋Hey guys, Julien here. The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication, and both our coverage of current affairs as well as our ability to bring you more news and information on the world around us is entirely funded by paid subscriptions and donations.
If you enjoy reading articles written by high-level experts, then make sure to support the publication by liking, subscribing, and sharing it with your friends and colleagues, and consider taking a paid subscription.
This week
⚖️Rally in defence of the rule of law
🇩🇿Macron appears “confident” on the Boualem Sansal dossier
🇺🇸Macron positions himself on Trump tariff response
⚖️Rally in defence of the rule of law
The Le Pen saga continues!
To begin with, last weekend saw a disappointing showing on Saturday 5th April 2025 at the Rassemblement National’s protest in support of Marine Le Pen, after she received a five-year ban in criminal court for her part in embezzling around €2.9 million.
Despite the fact that the RN has been pushing the rhetoric that French society is scandalised by the court ruling regarding the criminal Le Pen’s punishment for embezzlement, and despite favourable weather that would normally encourage people to turn out, the party was unable to reach much more than 6-7,000 protestors in Paris.
Which pushed probable Presidential candidate, Jordan Bardella, to lie his heart out and claim north of 10,000 participants, as he and his party actively defended criminal activity, stealing taxpayer money, and attacking the rule of law in France and Europe.
For some background on all this, have a look at our dispatch from last week.
And, naturally, several groups acted in reaction to the RN’s event where there were complaints about the “tyranny of judges”, a favoured phrase of the authoritarian far-right.
The first response came from the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) and Europe Ecologie Les Verts (EELV), who pushed for an immediate counter-protest on Sunday 6th April in the same location, bringing together around 3,000 protestors despite being shunned by the Parti Socialiste, the communists, and the major trade unions.
The biggest complaint was that it was arranged too quickly, with the majority of actors being unable to mobilise for an event that seemed more about showing political force than anything else, and putting LFI on a pedestal in the capital.
However, this also went a long-way to showing the tensions between LFI, who are hell-bent on using this situation to push Jean-Luc Mélenchon as the leader for the left wing bloc, and the Parti Socialiste who are hell-bent on creating a non-Mélenchonist alliance for 2027.
Plus ca change.
Regardless of the drama, civil society had its chance to respond by actively organising around 40 protests across France on Saturday 12 April to defend the Rule of Law, unfortunately leading to mixed results that were likely impacted by the politics of it all.
Several of the protests found themselves being cancelled, in particular a protest in Marseille, Mélenchon’s former fief, due to there not being enough associations present at the time. This was repeated across several regions.
However, it seems that Paris had some fairly positive participation, with several thousand apparently appearing to participate in the capital.
The problem, however, is that with two blocks competing across the left-wing, parties attempting to get ahead of each other and benefit from the actions, and the egos of two leaders fighting each other publicly, the reaction to the weak demonstration in favour of Le Pen’s criminality has been scattered and enfeebled.
Not only this, but it appears to be the case that these protests actively pushed away the pro-rule of law politicians and activists from the centre and the far-right, with these activities having been a clearly left-wing affair, further weakening the reaction.
But, unfortunately, that’s French politics, and left-wing politics continues to stray further from what it used to be in its heyday, and will continue to do so until it manages to reunite under more reasonable, and politically savvy, leadership.
But I won’t hold my breath, as i’d like to continue being able to write these dispatches for you.
🇩🇿Macron appears “confident” on the Boualem Sansal dossier
On the other hand, there appears to be some hope regarding one topic, which is the case of Boualem Sansal, the Franco-Algerian writer, who was arrested by the Algerian government and sentenced to five years in prison.
The crime? “undermining national unity”, undermining Algeria's territorial integrity and economy, insulting authorities and possessing documents that endangered national interests.
You can read a current summary of this dossier, and the wider problems between France and Algeria, in a recent weekly dispatch from 23 March.
This Friday, Emmanuel Macron was participating in the Paris Book Festival, and indicated that there was movement on the Boualem Sansal dossier, with “special attention” being given by the Algerian authorities.
“Listen, we're working to ensure that decisions are taken in the right direction, and we know how much we think of him and his family, how much he is both an important author and a great writer for us all, but also a man who needs to be treated. And our most fervent wish, and this is what we are working on, is that the Algerian authorities will take the decision that will allow us to recover his full freedom, to get treatment and to be able to write again. … I'm confident because I know that special attention is being paid, and I'm simply waiting for the results.”
- Transcription of Macron’s interview with BFM.TV in the video above
Now whether or not these discussions will go in the right direction is anyone’s guess, with Franco-Algerian relations being in a troubled place, to say the least, right now. The Algerian government may also continue to try to leverage this situation, alongside the troubled situation with Interior Minister Retailleau, to gain some political benefits from this situation.
But, we will have to wait and see where this all goes.
🇺🇸Macron positions himself on Trump tariff response
.jpg){kind=link}
So, as many of you know, the Donald Trump administration have been having a very messy start to the administration, with a very confused and convoluted tariff strategy that caused north of $6.6 trillion of damage to the U.S economy, and far more across the global economy.
The most interesting party of all of this is that the U.S administration has been yo-yo’ing with it’s tariff policy, applying heavy tariffs across the world, revoking them, increasing them, and putting them down to 10% across the board for everyone, excluding the very specific tariffs on sectors such as the EU automotive, steel, and aluminium industries.
But with U.S tariffs on China and Chinese tariffs on the U.S climbing higher and higher, and the highly destructive trade war occurring, many are counting their blessing regarding the 90-day ‘pause’ on tariffs that has been put in place on everyone but China.
One of these people is French President Emmanuel Macron, who stated that while this was a “fragile” pause, that it nontheless represented “an open door to negotiation”
“The temporary suspension of U.S. tariffs for 90 days is both a signal and an opening for negotiation.
Yet this pause remains fragile.
Fragile, because the 25% duties on steel, aluminium and automobiles, as well as the 10% tariffs on other products, are still in place. They amount to €52 billion in duties on the European Union.
Fragile, because 90 days of pause means 90 days of uncertainty for our businesses, on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.
Alongside the European Commission and in full unity, our goal is clear: to negotiate the removal of these unfair tariffs and reach a balanced agreement without asymmetry.
We must remain strong. Europe must keep working on all necessary countermeasures and mobilize every available tool to protect itself, including against redirected flows from third countries that risk destabilising our market.
France is ready. Europe must be too. Let us stay clear-eyed, united, and determined to defend our interests.
Yesterday, I once again met with entrepreneurs and industrial leaders who are deeply concerned. These American tariffs strike at the core of their businesses. We are right to stand our ground — jobs and the future of our regions are at stake.
Together with our European partners, we will do everything to protect our companies and industries, to uphold our economic sovereignty, and to secure the future of our jobs.”
You can imagine that there are two concrete paths before Emmanuel Macron, who continues to position himself as the leader of the European Union in these last two years of his presidency.
Firstly, attempting to solve the issue of the huge tariffs being levied on the EU’s key industries, which are all already under pressure in an increasingly difficult geopolitical environment that is being hammered by the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chinese trade practices, and an unstable American foreign policy that is mostly aimed at throwing things in the air.
Secondly, the drive towards European autonomy and self-sufficiency, with the biggest issues to overcome being the dependence of many states on American military support, the urgent need to build on the success of projects like Mistral’s Le Chat in AI, and the need to develop more success stories across sectors, and the need to rebuild the European military industrial complex.
Both of these are going to be major headaches for the European Union and for Macron in particular, but is causing some very dynamic movements within the Union, most notably in terms of a move towards China.
Thank you for reading the French Dispatch! If you liked what you read, you should like this post and subscribe to the newsletter by clicking/tapping the button below:
And if you’d like to contribute a coffee or two to help fuel my coverage of the wild world of politics, feel free to click on the picture below:
Thank you for the mention of Le Chat, of which I was unaware. It seems excellent from the little I have used it today.
Melanchon should get a medal for "the main political dinosaur in France."