🇫🇷Le Pen’s Aircon Push, RN’s Legal Woes, Macron vs Iran, and a Youth Rebrand
As Marine Le Pen launches a campaign built on cool air, the RN faces fresh embezzlement charges, Macron warns Iran, and Macron’s youth wing rebrands. Plus, new Dispatch projects.
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This week
🆕Some New Projects - Chez Julien, YT, and IG
𖣘Marine Le Pen launches Presidential campaign on Aircon
👮Rassemblement National targeted with new EU embezzlement case
☢️Emmanuel Macron threatens “retaliation” against Iran
✍️Jeunes Avec Macron changes name, but not ideology
🆕Some New Projects - Chez Julien, YT, and IG
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𖣘Marine Le Pen launches Presidential campaign on Aircon
To begin the week, Marine Le Pen came out strongly in favour of Air Conditioning this week, announcing that one of her priorities as President would be a major plan to equip France with air conditioning.
With France experiencing a massive heatwave this week, Paris saw temperatures exceeding 35°, while some areas reached 40° or higher. Marine Le Pen seized the opportunity to engage in some good old-fashioned populism.
“As heatwaves will unfortunately become regular, public services are unable to function due to a lack of air conditioning, unlike dozens of countries around the world.
Hospitals, schools, nursing homes, public transportation, etc., are not equipped, even though these places serve French people who are particularly sensitive to heat.
The government is still out of touch. It is surreal to tell families to stop working overnight because schools can no longer accommodate our little ones while advising them to go to the local cinema, which, of course, is air-conditioned…
But I also think of all the workers sweltering in buildings without air conditioning because leaders have decided that the French must suffer from the heat while they themselves obviously enjoy air-conditioned cars and offices. With the so-called French elites, sobriety is always reserved for the middle and working classes.
This major air conditioning plan will be part of the measures I will soon present to encourage building renovations and improve quality of life as part of a popular, sovereign, and cost-effective environmental transition.”
With Europe being less equipped than the United States of America or Japan, as well as other states, an increasingly hot temperatures in our homes and environments, there has been more and more discussion regarding whether Europe is ready for the future, as well as the fact that many in Europe are simply not fans of these systems.
There are ongoing discussions about the best ways to reduce temperatures in European cities, with European governments attempting to find greener ways of cooling cities, such as greening through the planting of more trees in cities like Paris.
However, these systems offer (not-so) cold comfort for those who live outside cities, who are more exposed to temperature changes and heatwaves, particularly those in the countryside, where there is less tree cover and fewer opportunities to build infrastructure to protect citizens from high temperatures.
This is where Marine Le Pen, currently appealing her five-year ban from political life for the embezzlement of European Parliamentary funds, hopes to profit from discontent, building yet another barrier between the “elites” and ordinary French citizens suffering from the hubris and selfishness of those governing them.
Which, unsurprisingly, works better than you would think.
👮RN and Identity and Democracy Group targeted with a new EU embezzlement case
“Again? Really?” I hear you ask in apparent disbelief, as the far-right party whose far-right leader is having to appeal a five-year ban from political life due to her key role in embezzling European funds for domestic political benefit.
“Yes, again, really”, I reply, as the far-right party, whose far-right leader is having to appeal a five-year ban from political life due to her key role in embezzling European funds for domestic political benefit, is targeted with yet another investigation in embezzlement.
This time, however, it’s not just Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National that's being targeted for potential criminal activity, but the European political group to which it belongs: the Identity and Democracy Group, which has since become both the Eurosceptic Patriots for Europe, as well as the Eurosceptic Europe of Sovereign Nations group.
Yes, the European group that is so patriotic that it hosts the pro-Russian and anti-European Viktor Orban.
According to an investigation by French Le Monde, German “Kontraste” and Die Zeit, as well as the Austrian Falter, the ID Group is being accused of irregular spending to the tune of around €4.33 million during the 2019-2024 European parliamentary mandate.
And as Le Monde highlights, this is not too far from the “financial damage” that was caused by the Rassemblement National’s financial embezzlement / fake jobs scandal that cost Marine Le Pen her career.
However, the significant difference is that this scandal concerns the funding provided to political groups, as opposed to individual funding for Members of the European Parliament.
While there are several key aspects of this case that Le Monde goes further in depth into, such as supplier contracts, rule-breaking, and the involvement of neo-fascist activists, there is one big issue being raised.
With the Identity and Democracy Group having split apart, with the majority creating the not-so-patriotic Patriots for Europe group, chaired by RN President and Le Pen successor Jordan Bardella, and a smaller grouping forming the Europe of Sovereign Nations, investigators are trying to determine whether there is any legal continuity.
With the ID Group having been dissolved and effectively ceasing to exist, any potential legal case being sent to the European Public Prosecutors’ Office would likely depend entirely on whether or not there is any legal justification for the Patriots for Europe grouping being held responsible for the antecedent group’s financial misbehaviour.
And that isn’t as cut and dry as you would think, or as simple to justify as it may seem to us.
☢️Emmanuel Macron threatens “retaliation” against Iran
So, next up on the agenda: two French citizens, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, have been detained by Iran since 2022, and this Wednesday, they were indicted for "spying" for the Mossad (Israel’s secret service), "plotting to overthrow the regime" and "corruption on earth."
Now, aside from it being hard to believe that Cécile Kohler, a 40-year-old literature teacher, or her 72-year-old partner Jacques Paris, were practising spycraft in Iran, it is a well-known geopolitical fact that Iran practices “hostage diplomacy”.
This incredibly problematic practice involves Iran arresting foreigners, usually Europeans or Americans, in an attempt to influence the negotiations and discussions surrounding the Iranian Nuclear Programme and the lifting of sanctions.
Naturally, this whole situation is going down like a lead balloon in France, with President Emmanuel Macron having come out and decried a “provocation against France”, an “unacceptable choice of aggressiveness” and an “offence”, threatening “retaliatory measures” that would “not be long in coming.”
“I could just say it's fanciful if it wasn't criminal.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot likewise made it clear that France would not simply wait for the situation to resolve itself, with the threat of a “snapback” being on the horizon:
“We have always said to our interlocutors in the Iranian regime: the question of possible decisions on sanctions will be conditional on the settlement of this problem, this major dispute"
This “snapback” mechanism is a tool that would allow the international community to reapply the severe international sanctions that were eased as part of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), allowing Iran to pursue limited nuclear enrichment.
This agreement had been weakened initially in 2018, when Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement unilaterally, despite the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stating that Tehran had complied with it.
Some have claimed it was due to Trump’s attempts at strongman politics, while others claim it was due to the fact that his administration had several members who held hawkish positions on Iran.
One other possibility is that Donald Trump harbours a long-term out-of-control hatred for everything even remotely related to Barack Obama, like many of his followers.
Regardless, this withdrawal is credited as the reason why Tehran has been aggressively increasing its reserves of enriched nuclear materials, raising the threshold of enrichment to 60%, far above the 3.67% ceiling of the JCPOA agreement.
With the agreement’s UN Security Council support ending when UNSC Resolution 2231 expires on 18 October 2025, the discussions surrounding the fate of the agreement, as well as the potential application of the “snapback, are intensifying.
Naturally, Donald Trump’s MAGA America is aggressively against anything that could help Iran extract any advantages of any kind, and as seen recently with their support for the limited Israeli war on Iran, they are actively working on drawing as many European states to their side.
And for the time being, that seems to be working.
European member states are actively seeing their efforts come to nought, with Iran’s kidnapping of their citizens and using them as political hostages actively calling into question their efforts, and with the current hegemonic power actively attacking the JCPOA, European powers are finding they have less and less reason to actively try to support this.
Which is all very bad news for an Iranian regime that was shown to be far weaker than it actually is, and appears to be at the mercy of the political humours of Donald Trump and Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu.
✍️Jeunes Avec Macron changes name, but not ideology
To finish off the week: the long-lasting youth wing of Emmanuel Macron’s party, Renaissance, is now transforming its identity as Emmanuel Macron’s presidential mandate continues to head towards an end.
Called “Les Jeunes avec Macron” (JAM - Young People with Macron) until yesterday, President Emmanuel Macron was in attendance for the announcement of the recent consultation on how to change the name.
And we saw a celebratory event, with many motivational speeches by key actors of the movement, such as former Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne, Renaissance Secretary General Gabriel Attal, Ecology Minsiter Agnès Pannier-Runacher, and others.
But the most important part of the event, celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the party, was the announcement by the youth wing’s President, Ambroise Méjean, of the party's new name.
Announced as the ‘Jeunes en Marche’ (JEM - Young People on the move), which beat the name ‘Young Progressives’ with 70% of the vote, the name is clearly a call back to the initial identity of Macron’s centrist force, which was called ‘En Marche’ back in 2017, before being renamed as ‘La Republique en Marche’ and eventually, Renaissance.
As Ambroise Méjean has explained in several speeches and interviews, the choice of name was made on three points: loyalty to the project carried out in 2017, loyalty to the President of the Republic and the fact that En Marche is a name widely identified by the French.
Méjean also explained that the renaming of the party is very far from an “end of Macronism”, as highlighted by Gabriel Attal and other members of Renaissance on several occasions. This is, in fact, a reaffirmation of their support for the project, Macronism, and a recommitment to fighting for the values that originally inspired Macron’s project.
The biggest mission for the youth wing now, in the words of those involved, is to begin working on reinforcing outreach to the youth, which their president recognises as a challenge due to the complexity of the Renaissance project, as well as preparing their platform for 2027.
This does not necessarily mean automatic support for the current party leader, Gabriel Attal.
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