🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Political self-crowning
The French Senate rejects CETA free trade agreement, Jean-Luc Mélenchon launches 2027 Presidential bid, Rachida Dati aims to reform culture pass, and François Bayrou is crowned in re-election
👋Hey guys, Julien here.
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This week
🙅♂️Senate rejects CETA free trade agreement
🚀Mélenchon launches 2027 Presidential bid
🎭Rachida Dati aims to reform culture pass
👑Bayrou crowned in re-election
🙅♂️Senate rejects CETA free trade agreement
Right, kicking things off this week is a long-standing bug-bear in French politics: the EU-Canada Trade agreement.
Having initially been ratified at the European level via treaty back in 2017, it has since been the punching bag of the politician opposition in France, and simply an easy way to take a swing at French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Union.
Despite a lack of concrete evidence of this being damaging towards anybody in France, and with most evidence showing that CETA would, in fact, benefit most people across most sectors, the dossier has become mired in conspiracy and political opportunism.
Of course, if you have proof of any damage this would cause, do feel free to email me a draft of an article outlining this, as I’m sure we would all appreciate it.
Regardless, after a concentrated effort to prevent the ratification of the EU treaty at national level, it appears that the opposition has won out, with 82% of senators voting against it, in an act that crossed party lines.
If you want a breakdown of who exactly voted against ratifying the CETA treaty, you can poke your head into the Les Décodeurs article outlining specifically who voted for what.
However, the French government now has a problem: as this attempt was rejected, the whole process has to start again, and the Attal government will have to find the time to put a new ratification process on the calendar of the French Assemblée National.
Worse, an opposition party may decide to pre-empt them in order to cause the process more damage, and delay it even further.
But hey, welcome to French politics.
🚀Mélenchon launches 2027 Presidential bid
Moving on to more expected political events, we’ve now had an announcement that everybody expected:
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the founder and leader of La France Insoumise, has decided that he would like to once again take a swing at capturing the Elysée.
He had previously made a semi-announcement that he would hand over the reigns of the party after the 2022 Presidential Election, and gave signals that he would let someone else take his position
However, he’s now announced a 180 degree turn, and the explanation is very simple: he simply cannot let it go.
For a man who has spent his whole life working towards becoming a politician who could challenge and win a Presidential Election, it is highly unlikely that he is unable to simply renounce this opportunity.
You can see this in how he reacts whenever one of the members of his party begins to get a bit too big for their boots, such as Francois Ruffin, who has signalled several times that he is interested in running, and has repeatedly been slapped down by the big boss of the firebrands.
And this type of behaviour has all formed a part of a general strategy of suppressing the internal conflict that could undermine Mélenchon’s position, and beat back the « frondeurs ».
With a not-so-insubstantial group of frondeurs, such as François Ruffin, Clémentine Autain, Alexis Corbière, Raquel Garrido, and Danielle Simonnet, Mélenchon has made a point of regularly humiliating them, and reminding them of their dependence on his acceptance of their behaviour and his support through his party.
He has even begun sidelining many of these frondeurs, such as preventing Clémentine Autain, from speaking at a meeting in her own constituency,
This behaviour was extended to the member parties of the coalition members who sat under La France Insoumise within the NUPES coalition, such as the Parti Socialiste and Europe Écologie Les Vers, who were frequently the punching bag of their “boss”.
Hence why the coalition is slowly falling apart, with the fluctuation of power caused by a greater awareness of La France Insoumise and the behaviour of their leader.
Ultimately, we’re still quite far out from the 2027 elections, and these kinds of declarations mean very little, just like the attempts of Les Républicains to install Laurent Wauquiez as their candidate, and Horizons’ attempts to put forward Edouard Philippe to lead the Presidential Majority.
🎭Rachida Dati aims to reform culture pass
Now moving on from political narcissism and sabotage, we move towards a more cultural topic, as Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, announced that she wants to reform the Culture Pass.
Having already been generalised in 2021, and now being offered to all students aged 18 for a total amount of 300 EUR, it has been one of the major victories of the Macron Presidency.
However, Dati believe that it simply reinforces social inégalités.
“I have reservations about its practice. I wish to reform this pass so that it is not at the service of social reproduction – I have the deep conviction that this is what it is today – but at the service of cultural democratization”
Her main criticism is that the programme, in her opinion, “does not quite fulfill its role. It often reproduces cultural and social inequalities, whether in terms of access to culture or diversification of practice.”
A part of this is her knowledge of the fact that, for many citizens, there’s a sense of “it’s not for me” amongst may citizens, which your editor can sympathise with 100%
The example that she has used to illustrate this is the story of a young person from Clichy-sous-Bois who went to the theatre with his friends, and when they realised they were the only North Africans and black people in the room, they felt like they were completely out of place and shouldn’t be there.
It’s for this reason that she to move further towards encouraging a move way from these mentalities through incentivising participation in theatre and opera shows, and to actually start diversifying the participation in cultural activities.
👑Bayrou crowned in re-election
To finish up the week, a non-story:
As the only candidate for the presidency of the MoDEM party, the party founder, François Bayrou managed to win re-election to the presidency of the party this past Saturday, 23 March.
Having even its president since its founding in 2007, Bayrou won with 88.1% of the total votes cast by the party delegates, leading many to ask: what happened with the other 11.9%?
“I am very happy with this result, because it is a testimony of confidence and a testimony of faith in our future” François Bayrou declared following the vote, speaking at the Salle du Jeu de palm in Blois.
“We have, this weekend, a mission: to carry out a project of hope for France [against] our main enemy: resignation and defeatism …[this] enemy serves the other enemies, all those who want to transform dissatisfaction into detestation and hatred, all those who want to find scapegoats in our country, in our national community”
With MoDem having four ministers within the government, 50 deputies, four senators and six MEPs, Bayrou’s party has been steadily reinforcing it’s position under the banner of the Presidential Majority, led by Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance.
And while people have been focusing on Edouard Philippe’s Horizons preparing to take the lead within the majority, or even trying to figure out who within Renaissance could be Macron’s heir, people may be underestimating Bayrou.
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If we end up with an election choosing between Le Pen and Mélenchon I don't know who I'm going to vote for. Time and time again Le Pen has shown she's a far more canny politician then Mélenchon who seems to think that magically Nupes will will a Censure if he keeps holding them
I guess blanc is my most likely choice
One question regarding Bayrou. Is he a liberal or more of a centrist? How would you describe his profile?