🇫🇷 While I’m Away: Macron Snubs Farage, EU Crisis Deepens, Russia Targets France
Macron, Farage, Von der Leyen and Russia: the French Dispatch’s key reads of the week
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Dear Readers,
Just to let you know, there will be no Weekly Dispatch this week as your favourite newsletter is going back to the homeland for a week of relaxation, but you have a few things to read from this very eventful week!
Firstly, there was a big brouhaha to kick off the week, because the far-right got vewy vewy mad about the fact that French President Emmanuel Macron, who was on a state visit to the United Kingdom, didn’t make time in his very very busy schedule to meet the leader of a party with 5 Members of Parliament.
The reaction to this can be summarised with a hearty “mdr”
🇬🇧Macron Snubs Farage During UK Visit - and He’s Right to Do So
French President Emmanuel Macron is meeting leaders with real political weight, not poll-chasing populists like Nigel Farage.
We followed this up with part 2 of the Post-American Europe series, written by
for The French Dispatch.🇪🇺 Post-American Europe, Part II: Nomocracy and the European Model of Democratic Power
How the EU’s rule-based governance offers a viable blueprint for global cooperation in an age of authoritarian resurgence
Following on from this, I sat down with
to cover the big events of the week, like the burgeoning EU-US trade war, Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen’s confidence vote, and why she may not be the leader we need right nowDave and Julien talk European sovereignty, Trump's trade war, votes of confidence, and police raiding the far-right
Behind the headlines: defence ambitions, trade disputes, a fragile majority in the European Parliament, and the Rassemblement National gets raided by financial police!
Naturally, when this vote did happen, we covered that too, and you can see a quick analysis of the vote and its impact here:
🇪🇺Von der Leyen Survives EU No-Confidence Vote Amid Growing Political Dissent
Backed by centrists and socialists, the Commission President remains in power, but fractures in her pro-European coalition raise questions about her future.
And finally, we had the big news of the week: in a very, very rare form of event, General Thierry Burkhard warned us of the fact that Vladimir Putin’s Russia had designated France as its “first enemy”, and warned the French Republic of the fact that we are being targeted by multi-dimensional threats:
🇫🇷France is Russia’s “First Enemy in Europe”, Warns Military Chief in Rare Briefing
General Thierry Burkhard warns of a “lasting, close and dimensional threat” as France prepares to counter hybrid warfare theatres, with President Macron set to outline next defence steps
and for those of you who have somehow missed any of these articles (the horror!), you should now have more than enough to read with your morning coffee and pain au chocolat (this is not a ‘chocolatine’ kind of newsletter)
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Have a great Sunday and a great week! You can look forward to two articles dropping over the next couple of days.
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