🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Protecting mayors and society

A €5 million plan to protect French mayors, Izïa Higelin evokes “bloody” Macron lynching, Schiappa’s Fonds Marianne takes another hit, and the MEDEF has a new president

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This week

• 💶€5 million plan to protect French mayors

• 👮Izïa evokes “bloody” Macron lynching

• 📝Schiappa’s Fonds Marianne takes another hit

• 🗳️The MEDEF has a new president

💶€5 million plan to protect French mayors

Photo by Paul Bryan on Unsplash

Let’s start the week with a big announcement: a new plan to protect public officials across France.

Following the chaotic week of rioting that took France by storm and further fed conflict within society, the government is moving forward with a 5 million euro plan to protect French mayors.

As you will all remember, last week we covered the story of Vincent Jeanbrun, the Les Républicain mayor of L'Haÿ-les-Roses in Paris, whose family found itself the target of an ‘assassination attempt’, with rioters ramming a flaming car into his house in an attempt to burn the house to the ground.

This was also repeated in Montluçon, where a Mayor was hit in the head with a strong when trying to calm young people who were attacking several stores, and in Sannois (Val-d'Oise), who attempted to protect a town hall where young rioters wanted to burn down.

Violence towards mayors has been a long-term issue that governments have been attempting to find solutions to for a long time, and this is something that is always difficult to justify due to, in some opinions, the lack of prestige linked with the post.

While it’s expected that times of crisis like the Nahel riots, anti-lockdown riots, and the Gilets Jaunes cause these incidences to increase, it simply is not something that can be tolerated and is a direct attack on our Republic.

Due to the increasingly fraught situation for the Mayors just trying to do their jobs, the Minister Delegate for Local Authorities, Dominique Faure, announced a €5 million plan to begin providing the security needed for mayors.

Much of this fund is intended to provide security for the mayors, such as providing a “call button” that would allow security services to secure a town hall or a mayor’s home rapidly, as well as legal protections and psychological support in worst cases.

However, Faure has already been clear that a part of this plan is for the state to bear all insurance costs for municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. As well as this, the justice system will create a specific circumstance of harassment towards elected officials.

It’s also been made abundantly clear that the government will not support Eric Ciotti’s proposal of reducing family allowances to punish the behaviour of young people, with Faure noting that making families poorer will do nothing to support the rule of law.

We’ll have to wait and see how effective these measures will be, but the state seems to be taking the long-term problems in the relationship between French citizens and the state seriously, with discussions regarding some change to the law and reform of the police being pursued behind closed doors.

👮Izïa evokes “bloody” Macron lynching

French Singer Izïa Higelin (Photo by Pablo029)

A musical artist is now being investigated for a “public provocation to commit a crime or misdemeanour” after some troubling comments regarding French President Emmanuel Macron.

Performing in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, in the French Riviera, the Singer Izïa Higelin gave a very odd speech in between sets while dancing to a musical background:

“I know him, what a naughty one, he said to himself: “There, what would be good, I think that what the people want, what the people want, is to hang me twenty meters off the ground like a giant human pinata, and that we are all here with huge bats with nails on the end like in Clockwork Orange”

However, this didn’t stop there, and went even further:

“And, there, we would bring it down, but with all the grace and kindness that the people of the South have, right above you, and we'd all have our bats with our little nails, and in a bengal fire of joy, of living flesh and blood, we'd fuck him up. land, but nicely you see…”

She then made a joke about her speech making the headlines of Nice-Matin the next day, and after finishing her speech, she was exfiltrated by friends and colleagues and has been avoiding the police, who are continuing to look for her.

With Izïa’s next concert taking place at Marcq-en-Baroeul on July 13, which may not happen due to the police searching for her, there’s a very interesting situation on our hands where a public celebrity is actively avoiding an investigation into the violent murder of the President of the French Republic.

Having been seized upon by the Nice Prosecutors office, this has been the latest act in a long-term extremisation of behaviour that is encouraging an increasingly violent attitude towards the French President and other government officials.

There’s an important thing to be said of the increasingly precarious behaviour of public actors who appear to think that this kind of statement is perfectly okay and that there is nothing wrong with calling for violence towards human beings and a head of state.

Hélas, we all have much more work to do in our communities to responsibilise our fellow citizens and increase the discourse level in our respective societies.

📝Schiappa’s Fonds Marianne takes another hit

Marlène Schiappa speaking at the United Nations (Photo by Nantilus)

And on another front, the bad times keep rolling for Marlène Schiappa’s Fonds Marianne.

This time, the Inspection Générale de l’Administration (IGA) submitted a general report on the €2.5 million fund that was created to fight against seperatism and, in particular, jihadist propaganda following the murder of Professor Samuel Paty.

Combined with a Senatorial report, it does not look good for Schiappa’s pet project.

It confirmed that certain associations benefited from upstream “signposting” during the process, which created certain advantages in the call for applications.

It’s said that internal alerts were ignored by the Secretary General of the CIPDR, Christian Gravel, concerning certain organisations such as ‘Reconstruire le commun’ (Reconstructing the Commons).

This organisation caused alarms regarding the youth of the organisation, it not meeting the requirement of organisations being at least a year old, and the level of achievement that it reached with the funding it received.

Not only this, however, but one particularly problematic alert was made regarding the political nature of the content it was producing, and the fact that the CIPDR’s controls had shortcomings that prevented it from avoiding this situation.

In the end, the report comes to one sad conclusion:

“The primary objective of the Marianne fund , namely the emergence of new actors in the field of republican counter-discourse, has obviously not been achieved”

Now, there is very clearly a need to have this ‘republican counter-discourse that can combat a mentality that is increasingly becoming a problem within the discourse of our country.

If this could be constructed in a way that would actually manage to galvanise the population and encourage them to become positive leaders/role models in their communities and reinvigorate a sense of republicanism in the country, that would be great.

However, is a project launched by a somewhat opportunistic politician who appears addicted to the limelight really the best vehicle for this? And considering the lack of investment from other political parties, was the goal ever realistic in the first place?

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🗳️The MEDEF has a new president

To wrap up the week, a HR story: The MEDEF (Mouvement des Entreprises de France), has elected a new president who will succeed Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux

With the election being held between Patrick Martin and Dominique Carlac’h, the influential organisation had an important vote to engage in, with the former National Council of the French Employers having 750,000 member firms.

Patrick Martin won the vote handily, who had 73.18% of the vote versus Carlac’h’s 26.82%.

Attending a meeting on July 12 in Matignon with Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, and other social partners, he was clear that several big negotiations were on the horizon, most notably regarding Pension Reform and the continuation of the reduction in production taxes.

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