Emmanuel Macron’s government survived two no-confidence votes brought by opposition lawmakers on Monday over hugely unpopular pension reforms.
The poll in the National Assembly on Monday was triggered by the head of state raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a parliamentary vote.
The no-confidence motion filed by a small group called Liot garnered support from 278 members of parliament in the National Assembly, falling short by only 9 votes, an unexpectedly close result.
A separate one filed by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party only received 94 votes because other opposition parties remain wary of teaming up with the far-right party.
The no-confidence motions were the result of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne triggering the 49.3 clause of the French constitution last week, passing the draft law without a parliamentary vote.
Now that the motions have failed, the pensions reform raising the retirement age by two years to 64 can be adopted and the Borne government will remain in place.
Soon after the vote, small groups of protesters gathered around parliament and clashed with police.
President Emmanuel Macron of France has congratulated Nigeria’s President-elect, Sen. Bola Tinubu, on his victory in the February 25 election.
The President-elect confirmed this to newsmen after presenting his Certificate of Return to President Buhari in his country home, Daura, Katsina State, on Wednesday night, March 1.
Recall that Tinubu had earlier on Wednesday received the Certificate of Return from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja before embarking on the trip to Daura alongside his Vice President-elect, Sen. Kashim Shettima.
Tinubu, who was reacting to questions on messages of congratulations he so far received since his declaration by INEC as President-elect, said ”
Oh very many, many of that, in fact as far as Europe, the stock market reacted positively well, there was a goodwill message from Macron, the President of France.”
On his mission to Daura, the president-elect said ”I came to present the certificate of return to him (Buhari) as the party leader and commend his efforts in supporting democracy in Africa.”
French President Emmanuel Macron is due to start a five-day trip to Africa on Wednesday, with stops in Gabon, Angola, Congo and Congo-Brazzaville, the Élysée Palace announced.
Mr Macron plans to attend a UNESCO conference on the protection of forests, the One Forest Summit in Gabon’s capital Libreville.The president also plans to open a new French embassy in the city.
In Angola, the main topic for discussion is expected to be cooperation in the agricultural sector, likely to increase the country’s security of supply and help farmers prepare for climate change.
In the two Congo republics, the focus is expected to be on cultivating relations with France.Mr Macron’s trip to Africa came when France, as a former colonial power, is under pressure in several African countries.
Anti-French resentment is being expressed, for example, in the countries of the Sahel, where France has troops stationed in the fight against terrorism.
Russia is also trying to gain influence in the region with the help of the mercenary force Wagner.
On Monday, before the start of his trip, Mr Macron announced the withdrawal of more soldiers from Africa.
“The troop strength is to be visibly reduced,” said Mr Macron.
Mr Macron also held out the prospect of a law to return looted art.
France’s top administrative court on Tuesday gave the green light for the expulsion to Morocco of an imam accused of hate speech, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
Hassan Iquioussen “will be expelled from the national territory” in “a great victory for the republic,” the minister wrote on Twitter, citing a decision of the Council of State.
The case landed before the highest court after Paris judges blocked the imam’s deportation, which the interior ministry ordered in late July over “especially virulent anti-Semitic speech” and sermons calling for women’s “submission” to men.Iquioussen, 58, reaches tens of thousands of subscribers via YouTube and Facebook accounts from his home in northern France.He was born in France but holds Moroccan citizenship.
His lawyers successfully applied to the Paris court for a block on the order, saying it would create “disproportionate harm” to his “private and family life”.
An interior ministry lawyer last week told the Council of State Iquioussen “has for years spread insidious ideas that are nothing less than incitement to hatred, to discrimination and to violence”.
But the preacher’s lawyer retorted that some of the remarks including anti-Semitic or misogynistic speech dated back more than 20 years, pointing out that he had never been prosecuted for his public statements.
“Yes, Mr Iquioussen is a conservative. He has made retrograde statements on women’s place in society,” Lucie Simon said.“But that does not constitute a serious threat to public order.”
The interior ministry representative retorted that the imam’s words “create fertile ground for separatism and even terrorism,” insisting that he “remains an anti-Semite”.
Darmanin had warned that he would try to change the law if judges found Iquioussen could not be expelled.
A 28-year-old man who slapped French president, Emmanuel Macron, has been sentenced to four months in jail.
Damien Tarel was immediately arrested after the incident which occurred as Macron was greeting a crowd in the region on Tuesday.
A French court in the south-east city of Valence convicted Tarel on Thursday June 10, on a charge of violence against a person invested with public authority.
He was given four months in prison and an additional 14-month suspended sentence, and was banned from ever holding public office and from owning weapons for five years.
Tarel described himself as a right-wing or extreme-right “patriot” and member of the gilets jaunes economic protest movement.
After the incident, Tarel acknowledged hitting the president with a “rather violent” slap.
When I saw his friendly, lying look, I felt disgust, and I had a violent reaction. It was an impulsive reaction … I was surprised myself by the violence,” he told the court.
He said he and his friends had considered bringing an egg or a cream pie to throw at the president, but had dropped the idea – and insisted that the slap wasn’t premeditated.
I think that Emmanuel Macron represents the decline of our country,” he said, without explaining what he meant.
Macron wouldn’t comment Thursday on the trial, but insisted that “nothing justifies violence in a democratic society, never.”
“It’s not such a big deal to get a slap when you go toward a crowd to say hello to some people who were waiting for a long time.
“We must not make that stupid and violent act more important than it is,” he said in an interview with broadcaster BFM-TV.
At the same time, the president added, “we must not make it banal, because anyone with public authority is entitled to respect.”
Another man arrested in the ruckus that followed the slap, identified by the prosecutor as Arthur C, will be judged at a later date, in 2022, for illegal possession of weapons.
The prosecutor’s office said that as well as finding weapons, police who searched the home of Arthur C also found books on the art of war, a copy of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf and two flags, one symbolising communists and another of the Russian Revolution.
Virus to stay ‘at least until next summer’ – France’s Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron says his country will be fighting the virus until at least the middle of next year as cases there surged past a million.
On Friday France recorded more than 40,000 new cases and 298 deaths. Other nations including Russia, Poland, Italy and Switzerland also saw new highs.
The World Health Organization said the spike in European cases was a critical moment in the fight against the virus. It called for quick action to prevent health services being overwhelmed.
Daily infections in Europe have more than doubled in the past 10 days. The continent has now seen a total of 7.8m cases and about 247,000 deaths.
“The next few months are going to be very tough and some countries are on a dangerous track,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
Globally there have been more than 42m cases and 1.1m deaths.
Scientists have warned that although progress is being made at unprecedented speed to create a vaccine, it would not return life to normal in spring. A vaccine could take up to a year to roll out, they have suggested.
Speaking on a visit to a hospital in the Paris region, Mr Macron said scientists were telling him that they believed the virus would be present “at best until next summer”, he said.
But he said it was still too early to say whether France would go into a new full or partial lockdown.
An overnight curfew in the country is being extended to about two-thirds of the country – 46 million people – from Friday night for six weeks.
The curfew could be relaxed when new infections dropped back down to between 3,000 and 5,000 a day, Mr Macron said – a level of infection that was last seen at the end of August.
Meanwhile the head of a Paris hospital group warned that the second wave of infections could be worse than the first.
“There has been a perception in recent months that a second wave does not exist, or that it is a small wave. The situation is the opposite,” Martin Hirsch, the head of the AP-HP hospital group, told local media.
People in much of France must be home by 21:00 local time from Friday
Many of those currently in intensive care in his hospitals were older people who had been self-isolating but had become infected when their children visited them, Mr Hirsch said.
“There are many positive people, infectious, in the streets without knowing it and without anyone else knowing it,” he added.
Covid patients currently occupy nearly half of France’s 5,000 intensive care beds.
And Prime Minister Jean Castex said a further influx of patients was likely – “The new cases of today are the hospitalised patients of tomorrow. The month of November will be difficult,” he said.
A teacher has been beheaded in a suburb north-west of the French capital Paris, reports say, with the attacker shot dead by police.
The victim in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine was a teacher who is said to have shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his students.
The anti-terrorism prosecutor has been called in to lead an investigation into the attack.
The incident occurred at about 17:00 local time (15:00 GMT) near a school.
French President Emmanuel Macron is to visit Conflans-Sainte-Honorine later on Friday evening.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, travelling to Morocco, is returning urgently to Paris.
France’s AFP news agency, quoting police and prosecutors, said the victim had been decapitated.
A man wielding a large knife is reported to have attacked the teacher in a street, cutting off his head. The attacker then ran off, but local police alerted by the public were quickly at the scene in the nearby area of Éragny.
When they shouted at him to give himself up, he is said to have threatened them. The officers shot him and he died a short time after,
The scene is now sealed off, as the investigation continues.
A trial is under way in Paris of alleged accomplices in the deadly 2015 attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
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