🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Borne III

23/07/2023 - The French Dispatch is recruiting, the new Borne III government, record sanctions in the Assemblée Nationale, and the Government pushes to fix riot damage

The Weekly Dispatch is your weekly update on major events in French and European politics, published on Sundays to give you the ideal summary of current affairs.

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This week

• 🧐The French Dispatch is Recruiting

• 🏛️Borne III

• 💰Record sanctions in the Assemblée Nationale

• 👷Government pushes to fix riot damage

🧐The French Dispatch is Recruiting!

Let’s start the week with a big announcement: your favourite publication is now recruiting volunteers!

With the increase in demand for high-quality dispatches from

The French Dispatch

, your favourite editor needs a little help to keep delivering the high-level content that you all enjoy and increase our output!

Currently, the positions I’m looking to fill are:

• Volunteer Deputy Editor - France & Europe

• Volunteer Social Media Manager

• Content enhancers - videos, infographics, charts, etc

Unfortunately, as much as I hate this fact, I can’t officially hire anybody for these positions currently. However, for those who want help, I would be more than happy to offer a free paid subscription and potentially a paid spot on the team in future.

If you’re interested and want to apply/have a conversation, you can look at our open positions page here to see the job specs or just respond to this email. You can also click on the French Dispatch logo below:

🏛️Borne 3

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne (Photo by Benoît Granier)

Well, it’s finally happened, everyone.

Immediately after the disaster that was the Pension Reform debates, French President Emmanuel Macron’s called for “one hundred days of appeasement and action” with a focus on ecology, work, social progress, justice, and republican order.

A big part of this was to move away from the toxic topic of Pension reform, but it was also the President throwing down the gauntlet for Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and her government, who were seen as having dropped the ball in a major way.

Alongside this, the failure to produce a workable coalition in the Assemblée Nationale had hamstrung the President’s agenda, and this was accompanied by an ‘invitation’ (read: demand) that Borne expand her Parliamentary support by building “new coalitions and alliances”.

After months of speculation regarding the possibility of Elisabeth Borne being ejected from her post, Emmanuel Macron ultimately announced through the Élysée Palace that he had asked her to stay in place, and propose a reshuffle.

Naturally, you will be seeing a special dispatch covering the movers and shakers of the Borne III government (if you’re subscribed at least), but here are a few notes already:

• The big names within the government, including potential candidates for 2027, have kept their portfolios

  • Bruno Le Maire - Minister of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty

  • Gerald Darmanin - Minister of the Interior and Overseas

  • Catherine Colonna - Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs

  • Eric Dupond Moretti - Minister of Justice

• A few members of the previous Borne government earned promotions

  • Gabriel Attal - Minister of National Education and Youth

• A few received minor demotions:

  • Sarah El Hairy - Secretary of State for Biodiversity

  • Bérangère Couillard - Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunities

• A few politicians with experience have just earned their first ministerial position

  • Aurore Berger - Minister in charge of solidarity and Families

  • Thomas Cazeneuve - Minister in charge of public accounts

  • Prisca Thévenot - Secretary of State for Youth and National Universal Service

However, if you want to hear more about who is who, type your email in the box below and subscribe to

The French Dispatch

💰Record sanctions in the Assemblée Nationale

The Assemblée National Plenary room (Photo by the Ministère français de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la recherche)

The new ministers will not only have their work cut out for them in impressing the President and Prime Minister, but in dealing with an increasingly unruly Assemblée Nationale.

Since the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, and the 2022 legislative elections a few months later, studies have shown that a record number of disciplinary sanctions have been handed out within the Assemblée, and almost entirely to La France Insoumise.

With Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party having adopted a strategy of disruptive opposition, they have engaged in actions that have been intended to attract the maximum amount of attention and slow down the legislative process as much as possible.

We have covered several of these instances, such as

• When Thomas Portes (LFI) standing with his foot on a decapitated effigy of Olivier Dussopt’s head (Renaissance, Minister of Labour, Full Employment and Inclusion)

• When La France Insoumise launched several failed censure motions, and stormed out of the Assemblée after yelling over one of the Prime Minister’s speeches

• When Matthias Tavel (LFI), yelled at a member of the Far-right to “shut up” in the middle of a debate

Not only this, but they have maintained an aggressive position outside of the Assemblée, notably ignoring bans in order to support protests such as one in tribute of Adama Traoré, which involved slogans such as “everyone hates the police”.

For context: Adama Traoré is a young man who died in 2016 after fleeing a police check, being apprehended, and escaping twice. The story goes that, at some point during his transit to a police station, he fell unconscious but was still breathing. Unfortunately, he passed away an hour later after emergency services had arrived on the scene.

Analysis from Le Monde’s Les Décodeurs shows an exponential increase in disciplinary actions, going from 3 in 2020, 4 in 2021, 8 in 2022, and then 85 in 2023 (to date).

For those who are curious: that’s a 2733.33% increase between 2020 and July 2023.

However, while it may be tempted to assume that this could be a good ol’ fashioned attempt at partisanship on the part of the Presidential majority, it should really be noted that the president of the Assemblée, Yaël Braun-Pivet, follows the rules of procedure closely.

With several from the Presidential camp complaining about the most recent actions of LFI and Europe Ecologie-Les verts (EELV), demanding sanctions for their participating in the banned Traoré protest, you’d expect some action on this.

However, Yaël Braun-Pivet refused, underlining that “only facts that take place within the confines of the Assembly can give rise to a disciplinary sanction”, and not things that take place outside of the building.

What this definitely does outline, however, is the tensions have exploded in the Assemblée hemicycle since President Macron’s second quinquennat, and shows a breakdown in the discipline of deputies in French politics, setting a problematic example for French citizens..

Whether this will continue over the long-term is yet to be seen, but I personally have severe doubts that this will end anytime before the next legislative actions.

In fact, I expect tensions to increase in the short term, and particularly in the lead-up to the 2024 EU elections and 2027 presidential election.

👷Government pushes to fix riot damage

(Photo by Toufik-de-Planoise)

To cap off the week: the government are pushing through an emergency bill to rebuild the buildings damaged by the recent riots related to the Nahel M killing.

Unanimously adopted by senators on Tuesday 18 July, the short bill would authorise the government to legislate via ordinances in order to circumvent certain rules within the town planning code.

This would speed up the reconstruction “of the buildings damaged or destroyed during the urban violence that took place from June 27 to July 5”, would simplify public procurement procedures for local authorities, and allow them to recover VAT.

And with over 750 public buildings having been damaged, there’s an urgent need to push for repairs as quickly as possible to regain a sense of normalcy and, in some cases, safeguard the public.

On Wednesday 19 July, the emergency bill for the reconstruction of buildings degraded or destroyed during the recent urban riots was adopted by the Economic Affairs Committee, with only the deputies from the Rassemblement National, La France Insoumise, and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts abstaining.

With Christophe Béchu, the Minister forEcological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, having warned deputies early on that the bill was “not a text on the causes of urban riots”, it seems that many are avoiding any temptation to treat it as such.

The Assemblée Nationale debated the bill on Thursday 20 July, with 260 voting in favour and 87 voting against, and with the text being identical to what the Senate voted for, it was definitively adopted.

Now, the government will need to present a draft law for ratifying the ordinances within three months of their publication, and communities have until September 30 to provide estimates for the work costs required.

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