French-American Foundation Weekly Brief highlights political, economic and cultural news stories related to France and French-American relations as well as trans-Atlantic and European issues.
After the second round of French elections held on Sunday, June 17, the Socialist Party (PS) enjoys an absolute majority in the National Assembly with 300 of the 346 seats in control of the majority party and its allies on the left, Le Monde and TIME reported. The large gains on the left were largely made at the expense of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which lost nearly half of its seats in an attempt to appeal to the far right of the party.
France
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After the second round of French elections held on Sunday, June 17, the Socialist Party (PS) enjoys an absolute majority in the National Assembly with 300 of the 346 seats in control of the majority party and its allies on the left, Le Monde and TIME reported. The large gains on the left were largely made at the expense of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which lost nearly half of its seats in an attempt to appeal to the far right of the party. Notable losers included several former members of Sarkozy’s cabinet, including former Minister of the Interior Claude Guéant, and Ségolène Royal, the 2007 Socialist Party presidential candidate and anticipated president of the new Assembly, who lost to Olivier Falorni, a dissident party member who rejected calls from his PS leadership to step down, The Guardian and Le Figaro reported. Other notable victories were won by the far-right National Front (FN) party, claiming seats in the National Assembly for the first time in fifteen years, Les Echos and France 24 added. Marine Le Pen’s suffered a close loss in the northern region of Hénin-Beaumont. However, her 22-year-old niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the youngest deputé elected, will serve as the representative from Carpentras, an agricultural town in the southern Vaucluse region. She will find her ideological partner in lawyer Gilbert Collard, also of Vaucluse. They face a strong left wing, anchored by Holland’s cabinet. All candidates from the cabinet who sought office were elected, according to Reuters.
On Saturday, June 16, President François Hollande attended a ceremony in Paris for four soldiers killed on June 9 in an Afghan suicide attack, reported Libération and France 24. Expressing “gratitude” for their “noble and just characters,” Hollande posthumously decorated all four soldiers as Knights of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor. The attack was committed weeks after Hollande announced the early exit of French troops from Afghanistan.
On Monday, June 18, three days after his period of presidential immunity ended, two families of victims in the “Karachi Affair” brought charges against former president Nicholas Sarkozy, Le Nouvel Observateur reported. The victims claim that he was involved in a complex kickback deal of submarine sales to Pakistan to fund the presidential campaign of former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, resulting in a 2002 Karachi car bombing that left 11 French naval engineers dead. Bloomberg further explored the issue of criminal charges against French presidents, as, historically, they have been untouched by the law. However, according to William Keylor, a professor of modern French history at Boston College, the corruption trial and sentencing of former president Jacques Chirac “does set a precedent.” Sarkozy may also face allegations of illegal campaign funding from L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and deceased Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
On Monday, June 18, at 8 a.m. Central European Time, approximately 483,036 high school students took the philosophy portion of the baccalauréat, the French standardized test taken at the end of high school, Le Figaro and Libération reported. Questions on the exam ranged from “Is all belief contrary to reason?” given to literature students, to “Is lying a political virtue?” an option for students on the technology track. The bac-philo, as it is more commonly known, was instituted by Napoleon in 1801 and is considered a fundamental aspect of the French education system.
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On Tuesday, June 12, Democrat Ron Barber, former aide to retiring Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, won her Tuscon Congressional seat in Arizona’s off-cycle election, The Week reported. The open seat created by Giffords’ resignation, due to brain injury sustained during a failed assassination attempt in 2011, stayed blue, with Barber taking 52 percent of the vote to his Republican opponent Jessie Kelly’s 46 percent. The Washington Post and L’Humanité explored the possible implications of this win for the American presidential and congressional elections this November.
The American consumer price index fell on Thursday, June 14, for the first time in two years, L’Express reported. Mostly caused by the 6.8-percent drop in oil prices, the new consumer price index shows a general concern about the eurozone crisis and worldwide growth, greatly affecting primary-material markets. Boursorama reported on the consequences of this decrease, citing the decline in purchasing power that will result.
Rodney King, symbolic figure of racial tension in the United States whose 1991 beating by four Los Angeles police officers became the image of the L.A. race riots the following year, was found dead in his swimming pool on Saturday, June 17, Le Point and Le Monde reported. The L.A. Times looked at King’s difficult life after his brutal encounter with police thrust him into the iconography of American civil rights and race relations.
Under pressure, President Barack Obama announced on Sunday, June 18, that he would modify his policy on illegal immigration, Le Nouvel Observateur reported. Undocumented immigrants who came to the United States before the age of 16 and are currently under 30 who have a high-school diploma or bachelor’s degree and no criminal record are now considered American citizens. This policy would stop almost 800,000 deportations. However, this announcement was met with criticism from presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, saying that it is an “election-year political move,” as covered by the Washington Post. Romney declined to unveil his own immigration plan.
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The Group of 20 met in Los Cabos, Mexico, on Monday and Tuesday, June 18 and 19, to discuss contributions to an additional $430 billion in funds to be granted to the International Monetary Fund as Europe and the world continue to be plagued by a shaky economy. Leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies urged “bold moves” to address the European debt crisis and financial woes across the globe, Reuters, Libération and Le Nouvel Observateur reported. While European nations were set to contribute the bulk of the extra funds, the top developing nations – China, India, Brazil and Russia – all agreed to make sizeable contributions, according to The Chicago Tribune. The Christian Science Monitor looked at the stability and status Mexico, host of this first G-20 summit held in Latin America.
Worldwide markets showed limited relief on Monday, June 18, after Greece’s legislative elections the day before put in power a legislature seemingly supportive of the austerity measures agreed to as part of European Union and International Monetary Fund bailouts. This as worries about Spain and Italy overshadowed the potential resolution of political gridlock that has plagued the debt-ridden nation, Le Parisien reported. Spain and Italy saw market losses of nearly 3 percent while 10-year bond returns in those nations jumped to 7.12 and 5.91 percent, respectively. Spanish bonds, in particular, reached levels comparable to those seen in Greece, Ireland and Portugal before these countries required international intervention, according to The Washington Post.
While markets showed little optimism about the future of the eurozone on Monday, June 18, credit-rating agency Fitch announced that eurozone nations would not face immediate downgrades after the Greek conservative New Democracy party took a narrow majority in legislative elections on Sunday, June 17, Bloomberg reported. In mid-May, Fitch had warned that a failure by Greece to elect a majority in favor of austerity and of the conditions of international bailouts would mean a negative outlook and possible immediate downgrades for the sovereign-debt ratings of all eurozone nations, according to Boursorama.
French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici vowed on Thursday, June 14, that the nation will meet its deficit goal of 4.5 percent of GDP for 2012, while figures released the following day showed that tax revenue in France had only increased 1.8 percent from a year earlier, four times less than government projections had anticipated, The Wall Street Journal and Les Echos reported. While the low 2012 growth projection of 0.5 percent for the French GDP has already caused weariness about the deficit goals, Moscovici warned this week that the deficit could be as high as 5 percent of GDP at the end of the year unless the newly formed Socialist-majority government finds upward of €10 billion in the weeks before the government will face its annual audit of public finances in early July, according to La Croix.
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In highly anticipated legislative elections held because a newly-elected legislature failed to form a coalition government last month, the center-right New Democracy party took a majority on Sunday, June 28, 29.6 percent and 130 seats to the radical right Syriza party’s 26.9 percent with 70 of the parliament’s 300 seats, The Christian Science Monitor and Le Figaro reported. Antonis Samaras, the leader of the New Democracy party announced that those elected have until Thursday, June 21, to explore possible coalitions. The PASOK Socialist Party seems likely to join the center-right in a commitment to adhere to the austerity measures instituted as part of a series of bailout packages the nation received from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, a commitment Syriza opposition campaigned against, according to The New York Times. However, leaders seemed hopeful that a coalition government would be formed by the evening of Tuesday, June 19, according to Le Parisien.
Greece’s far-right New Dawn party, which has campaigned against immigration, maintained its minority block in the elections, losing only three seats to retain 18 places, US News & World Report and The Washington Post reported. Tensions continue to rise between Greeks and their immigrant populations. The arrest of six far-right activists on Tuesday, June 12, for an attack on the home of Egyptian immigrants is but an example of the ongoing conflict in the debt-ridden nation, as covered by Le Monde.
The week proved tumultuous for Egypt as loyalists to ousted leader Hosni Mubarak moved to limit the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which achieved prevalence in the nation’s first democratically held elections since the transition of power. On Thursday, June 14, the Supreme Constitutional Court, named by Mubarak, dissolved the nation’s majority Islamist parliament just two days before the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohammed Morsi, was set to face off with Ahmed Shafik, former prime minister at the end of Mubarak’s reign, according to The New York Times. When Morsi won the presidential election with more than 52 percent of votes on Sunday, June 18, the Supreme Court announced a new bill dramatically diminishing the powers of the president, Le Figaro reported.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate and pro-democracy opposition leader from Myanmar, appeared across Europe this week on her first trip to the continent in a quarter century after years of house arrest, The New York Times reported. In Kyi’s first stop at the United Nations’ International Labor Organization in Geneva, she called for the international community to invest in Myanmar as a key step in advancing the nation toward democracy. She was honored in Ireland and then returned to her alma mater, Oxford University, as covered by TF1 and The Washington Post.
The Institute of Cetacean Research, an organization that oversees the controversial whaling industry in Japan, reported on Wednesday, June 13, that about 75 percent of the more than 1,200 tons of whale meat produced during the summer 2011 hunting season had gone unsold, Le Monde reported. From the nation that continues to whale despite an international moratorium on the practice through a loophole allowing for “scientific research,” the appeal of fresh and high-quality whale meat remains high, while frozen whale meat has failed to attract buyers, despite a number of auctions held between November and March, according to The Guardian.