Questions tagged [france]
Questions about politics and policy of the French Republic.
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Pension reforms. Why is the debate constrained to raising the retirement age or not, with no intermediate solutions?
This question was inspired by the French pension reform, but also in other European countries the situation is not different. The debate seems framed between the two extremes. Increase or not the ...
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Did Macron win any of the young left-wing voters in the 2nd round of the elections?
If one reads France24's vignettes of the young, left-wing voters before the 2nd round of the 2022 French presidential election, you could almost swear none were going to vote Macron:
"Macron or ...
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What’s the Realpolitik reason for Macron to change the retirement age despite this being very unpopular?
President Macron recently invoked Article 49.3 of the French constitution, allowing him to bypass the normal legislative process. This measure is quite unpopular and might result in him getting voted ...
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How often is Article 49.3 of the French Constitution used?
According to recent news:
On Thursday, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced that the government was resorting to Article 49.3 of the Constitution to force the bill through parliament ...
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Why does industrial actions in France seem to happen more frequently, visibly, and intensely than other EU states?
Obviously asking due to ongoing protests against pension reform in France.
This might be just a perception issue, but it seems France has a reputation of having more frequent, visible, and intense ...
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Which NATO countries sided with France in the 2020 Courbet frigate incident?
Back in 2020, according to French sources:
the relationship between Paris and Ankara was severely affected by a serious naval incident on June 10, in which a Turkish vessel threatened a French ...
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What are the options for a government facing massive protests over seemingly unsustainable economical measures?
Context
France is currently facing nationwide strikes due to pension system reformation discussions. According to France24, there seems to be a debate over the opportunity of such a reform:
French ...
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Why is there an official retirement age?
France strikes bid to halt Macron's rise in retirement age:
President Macron's reform programme faces a make-or-break moment, as
French unions stage a day of mass strikes and protests on Thursday
...
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Why does France public health system seem to have so many problems despite its rather big financing?
According to this article, France public health system problems became so big that French President Emmanuel Macron addressed to France’s health workers about them:
French President Emmanuel Macron ...
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Why do politicians get national honorary decorations?
On January first, in France, a few hundred people got the Légion d'Honneur, like M. Bayrou.
While this is obviously a personnal opinion, I do not believe, for several reasons which are out of topic ...
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How did the UK race ahead of France in GDP
Source of data
In 2019,
GDP of the UK was 2,743.586 Billion USD, while that of France was 2,707.074 B.
That is just a difference of 1.33 percent. Some might even dismiss it as noise.
In 2022 however,...
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How much foreign currency gets injected into the French economy every year because of CFA Franc?
How much foreign currency gets injected into the French economy every year from Africa because of CFA Franc alone?
How else is France profiting from this CFA arrangement?
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Why was the number of seats that RN gained in the 2022 legislative elections so poorly predicted by pollsters in the runup?
A France24 article from June says
RN’s performance at 90 seats is a “seismic event; an extraordinary result for them”, said Paul Smith, a professor of French politics at Nottingham University. “There ...
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Does France consider an HVDC grid connection to French Guyana?
An aspect that seems to plague the idea of a European supergrid for electricity (i.e. the concept of a renewables-dominated electricity grid with continental or even intercontinental ...
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Why does France resist the Midcat pipeline?
Earlier this month we read that the construction of a gas pipeline between Germany and the Iberian peninsula is strongly supported by Portugal, Germany and Spain. This pipeline should, at least in ...
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(Why) did the central French government deem the lifting of the burkini ban in Grenoble but not in Rennes an "unacceptable provocation"?
Unless the VOA is mistaken, Rennes lifted their public-swimming pools burkini ban a few years ago (seemingly in 2019) without causing much outcry.
A few years ago, local authorities quietly changed ...
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Did any high-level French politician come out against the burkini ban in public swimming pools?
As far as I can tell the Macron government and National Rally (Le Pen) have been against the burkini (thus calling for the ban). The high-profile left-wing candidates appear to have been very good at ...
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Has Macron explained which outcomes/situations he thinks (or perhaps was even let on by Putin) would be "humiliating" for Russia?
A fair bit of commentary has been written about Macron saying that Russia must not be "humiliated" in this war. Zelensky, for instance, said he doesn't understand what Macron is talking ...
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Do tiny communes in France have any practical significance?
The French commune of Rouchefourchat has exactly one inhabitant.
I imagine that would make mayoral elections rather boring.
Joking aside, do such tiny municipalities even have a mayor or local ...
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Why would far-left groups oppose Macron’s re-election?
As a background to this question, I know next-to-nothing about French politics other than briefly reading a few news articles about current events.
In response to the re-election of Emmanuel Macron in ...
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Why does the French presidential election system use two first-past-the-post rounds instead of a single preference-based voting round? [duplicate]
France has a system where presidential elections are decided on a first past the post (FPTP) electoral arrangement, whereby if no candidate wins 50% in the first round (someone winning in the 1st ...
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What is the point of Emmanuel Macron speaking so often with Vladimir Putin?
This article mentions the frequent discussions between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin:
French President Emmanuel Macron continues to keep his hotline open
with Russian President Vladimir Putin, ...
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Why does Zemmour score relatively well in Paris and with French living abroad, compared to Le Pen or his French nationwide scores?
The results for the first round of the French presidential election, 2022, overall:
Candidate
Score (%)
Macron
27.84%
Le Pen
23.15%
Mélenchon
21.95%
Zemmour
7.07 %
Pécresse
4.78%
The results ...
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How much natural gas does France import from Russia?
According to the BBC
France, like many other European countries, imports much of its natural gas through pipelines from Russia, using it for residential and commercial energy.
Of course, "much&...
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"Not a France.. having exited Europe.." Is Macron just mud-slinging or is there real reason to believe that a president Le Pen could lead to a Frexit?
CNN's Results are in for first round in French Presidential election shows a snippet of current French president Emmanuel Macron's recent speech. The English translation provided in audio is widely ...
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Is there any modeling on who would be the Condorcet winner in the French Presidential election?
The French Presidential elections use FPTP with a run off round, so directly determining the Condorcet winner is obviously impossible. But I wonder if pollsters have done any modeling to determine the ...
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How could Le Pen be seeking Mélenchon votes?
I read that Le Pen is courting Mélenchon (the 3rd place finisher) voters for the upcoming runoff election against Macron. However, I thought Mélenchon was the socialist candidate, so won't all of his ...
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What are the benefits for strong economies like Germany and France for being members of the European Union?
Recently I was reading things on the European debt crisis. It seems to me that when there is a financial crisis, strong economies in EU, like Germany and France, are supposed to help the countries in ...
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Have any French weapons been spotted on the ground in Ukraine?
France has refused to publicly disclose what "defensive military equipment" it's been sending to Ukraine, in order not to "provoke" Russia.
But there are plenty of country-specific ...
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Will there be any televised first-round presidential debates in France during the "equal airtime" period that starts on 28 March 2022?
The rule in France in 2022 is that the media must treat verified candidates for the presidency "equitably" until 28 March, and from then on it must treat them "equally". So before ...
user41840
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Why did France not want Russia to get Macron's DNA?
It is stated in this Guardian article (Macron was kept away from Putin in Kremlin for ‘refusing Russian Covid test’), that Macron refused a Russian Covid test because France did not want Russia to get ...
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Can an extra nomination in the French presidential election prevent a person's candidacy?
In order to be a candidate in a French presidential election, a person must obtain at least 500 "présentations" or "parrainages" from among tens of thousands of elected ...
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Did the French right wing ever call to vote for left wing candidates prior to 2012?
I am searching for any occasions, prior to 2012 and especially between 1995 and 2007, at which the right wing, especially the French President Jacques Chirac himself, called to vote for left wing when ...
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How are French nuclear facilities and technology kept secret under the European Union? [closed]
France is the only nuclear power in the EU. How does it protect its facilities and maintain the secrecy of technology when the European Parliament has at least some say in French security and military ...
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How do the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Armed Forces differ in their authority from the powers held by the President?
I know that France is a semi-presidential system where the head of government (Prime Minister) is separate from the head of state (President of the Republic). Now, some brief reading on wikipedia's ...
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Is there any international reaction on police violence in France?
On those holidays another round of anti-Covid protests took place in France:
Protests were suppressed rudely, with police violence and water cannons.
Is there any reaction from international ...
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Macron has made Covid vaccination hard to avoid in France but not mandatory. What accommodations exist for those who medically can't get vaccinated?
After months of slowing uptake on low overall vaccination rates, French President Macron has made the covid vaccine very hard to avoid, without making it mandatory:
In an address to the nation, ...
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Why do some African countries use the CFA franc if it means that they need to pay France money to be able to print money for their economies?
Why do some African countries use the CFA franc if it means that they need to pay France money to be able to print money for their economies?
Strictly speaking, the CFA franc is the name given to two ...
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Are there indications that the French government considered a carbon fee-and-dividend to assuage the yellow vests?
A key reason for the yellow vest protests was that poorer households would have been proportionally more impacted by the proposed fuel tax increases. Carbon taxes are generally regressive, i.e. impose ...
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Is the Vimy Ridge Memorial Canadian territory?
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial is a war memorial site in France dedicated to the memory of Canadian Expeditionary Force members killed during the First World War.
Suppose I want to open a gift ...
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Is there evidence of on-going legislation specifically targeting Muslims in France?
In 2004, France banned wearing conspicuous religious symbols in schools. In particular, this bans the Muslim headscarf, the Jewish kippah, and the Sikh turban. The turban has now been exempted as ...
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What actions have governments critical of Macron's response to the murder of Samuel Paty called for?
Following the murder of Samuel Paty in France two weeks ago, Emmanuel Macron gave a speech [fr] in which he defended freedom of expression and said "we won't give up on caricatures". This ...
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How much is the USA dependent on British and French support in international relations?
I know the relationship is mutually beneficial. But, I am trying to understand the depth of relations between the UK-France with the USA.
Can the USA function as smoothly as it is functioning in the ...
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Why isn't mail-in voting allowed in France?
AP news states flatly that:
Mail-in voting isn’t allowed in France.
What's the usual reason invoked by French politicians in making this prohibition?
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Why haven't more French territories declared independence, compared to British colonies?
The maps below exhibit that the area of Overseas France combined > area of British Overseas Territories. E.g. unlike France still with French Guiana, the UK no longer colonizes British Guiana, or ...
user6241
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Can the European Union defend its geopolitical interests militarily in the east Mediterranean against Turkey?
The latest deployment of Greek, French and Turkish warships in the east Mediterranean is probably only military sabre-rattling.
But I wonder whether the EU would actually be able to effectively defend ...
user32268
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Why does France support Haftar?
According to Politico, it's because Haftar controls the oilfields among other things. Is it a legitimate fear that Haftar would cut France off oil otherwise? Or is it a strategy for quicker peace?
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What percentage of Frenchmen still think [hydroxy]chloroquine is an effective remedy against Covid-19?
News from almost two months ago:
A survey released by French polling institute IFOP on 6 April revealed that 59% of the French population believes chloroquine is effective against the new ...
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Looking for French Media Bias Chart
Can anyone point me to a reliable French Media Bias Chart, please? I am looking for an equivalent of adfontes media bias chart for French media.
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What can cause a government to collapse in France?
In France, how can a government be forced to resign? Are there any examples of this occurring?
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