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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: Cakes, trains and restoring EU freedom of movement for Brits

From those EU proposals for 'freedom of movement' with the UK, via birthday cakes, trains and the awkward bits of French history, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Published: 20 April 2024 08:09 CEST
Inside France: Cakes, trains and restoring EU freedom of movement for Brits
The TGV train - the second best thing about France? Photo by Michel Euler / POOL / AFP

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Freedom of movement

There’s been a lot of political reaction in the UK to the EU’s proposal for a ‘youth mobility scheme’ to allow young people in the EU and UK to move countries for up to four years to work, study or just hang out – the suggestion being that it “restores pre-Brexit freedom of movement”.

As someone who has personally benefited hugely from EU freedom of movement (and probably would never have been able to move to France without it) I would be very much in favour of that.

But when you actually read the EU’s proposal, that’s not quite what is being suggested. It’s also at the very early stages, with negotiations not even opened yet, and the UK could kill it for any reason. Sadly, I think young people will be waiting a while for this, if it happens at all.

How would an EU-UK ‘youth mobility scheme’ really work?

Facing the past 

This year is the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings and the liberation of Paris, which will be remembered with a lot of international events.

However this week president Emmanuel Macron presided over a memorial of a different kind – remembering the massacre at the Alpine village of Vassieux-en-Vercors, where Resistance fighters were killed by French collaborators.

Referring to the collaborators, Macron said: “Let us also remember these French people, their choices and errors.”

This might all seem like ancient history, but I think the stories that countries that tell themselves about their past are important and how countries face up to complicated narratives like World War II are especially important – because all over Europe the far-right are peddling simplified and idealised versions of ‘history’ to create false narratives about the present.

Sweet non-treats

I was appalled this week to see this birthday non-cake given to finance minister Bruno Le Maire. Sure it looks pretty but what actually is it? A plate of fruit, a really thin flan? One thing it is certainly not is cake, which leads me to the conclusion that his colleagues secretly hate him, if this is what they got for him . . .

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Bruno Le Maire (@brunolemaire)

Talking of sweet (non) treats, over in the UK the Guardian’s restaurant critic Jay Rayner is apparently planning to try a ‘crookie’ (cookie dough croissant) on his next visit to Paris. I really would suggest that he doesn’t bother, not only are they horrible but they are €5.50 each.

You can spend a lot of money on fine dining in France if you want (or less money if you take advantage of some of the great lunchtime offers) but two of France’s best creations are also the cheapest – a baguette for roughly €1 (or €1.20 for a tradition) and a croissant for an average price of €1.10.

Train travel

And RIP to Jacques Cooper the designer of the second best thing about France (after the baguette) – the TGV, those high-speed trains which make exploring the country such a joy.

9 things to know about France’s TGV

Prompted by his rather non-French sounding surname I looked him up and discovered that he does indeed have (distant) British ancestry, his father came from Chantilly, which has a significant community of people with British roots, descended from those who came to work in the horse-racing industry at around the turn of the century. 

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: The French invasion, Rwanda shame and Macron’s reckoning

From 'squeaky bum time' for the Macron government to second homes, via the 'invasion' of French into the English language, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Published: 27 April 2024 09:49 CEST
Inside France: The French invasion, Rwanda shame and Macron's reckoning

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

The reckoning

Emmanuel Macron’s government is facing a series of ‘reckonings’ in the next few weeks, and it doesn’t appear happy or confident about any of them.

The first is that the international ratings agencies will – between now and the end of May – deliver their verdicts on whether to downgrade France’s credit rating. While that sounds dull, credit scores have a big impact on interest payments for debt, which is significant if your country happens to have a national debt of 112 percent of its GDP.

It’s reported that infighting has already begun at Bercy, with Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire looking less and less indéboulonnable (indestructible).

The other big test is the European elections at the start of June, where polls are predicting that Macron’s party will lose badly to Marine Le Pen and could even be forced into third place by a revitalised centre-left.

READ ALSO Can foreigners in France vote in the European elections?

European elections are funny things – technically they don’t matter at all to French domestic politics and it’s always risky to try and extrapolate too much from the European vote; turnout is usually low as a lot of people simply don’t care, the issues being voted on have little to do with French domestic politics and some voters see them as a safe way to give a kicking to an unpopular president without having any direct impact on French life.

But for an already weakened Macron who is now approaching his third year of governing without a parliamentary majority, a humiliation at the polls could have serious domestic consequences – The Local’s columnist John Lichfield even predicts that it could cause the fall of Gabriel Attal’s government and fresh parliamentary (not presidential) elections in the autumn.

It would be ironic if Macron – always one of the strongest advocates for the EU project – was to be so severely weakened by a European vote. 

The French invaders

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting book ‘La langue anglaise n’existe pas, c’est du français mal pronuncé’ (the English language does not exist, it’s just badly pronounced French) and – with humour – it makes some very interesting points about how English and French became so intertwined.

Author Bernard Cerquiglini also has a very interesting take on the frequent French complaints about the ‘invasion’ of English words into everyday French. He points out that many of these English words are in fact French in origin anyway, saying: “This isn’t an invasion, these are French words that have gone for training in England and that are coming back to us.”

Talking France

We dive into this subject in a little more detail in this week’s Talking France podcast, along with discussing the problem of youth violence in France, the new péage system and where in France are hotspots for second homes. Listen here or on the link below.

Shame

And if any Brits are wondering how their country’s recent political developments are seen in France, then look no further than the leftist French daily Libération, which devoted its front page to the passing of the Rwanda bill with the headline ‘aeroplanes of shame’.

Emmanuel Macron, as part of a wide-ranging speech at the Sorbonne university on Thursday, also condemned the scheme, saying: “We are creating a geopolitics of cynicism which betrays our values and will build new dependencies, and which will prove completely ineffective.”

Now France’s own treatment of migrants and asylum-seekers is very far from perfect, ditto the behaviour of the EU’s Frontex border agency, but on the UK’s Rwanda plan I believe that Macron and Libération are entirely correct; it is both shameful and ineffective.

Sometimes it can take a friendly neighbour – and France has demonstrated repeatedly that it is a friend to the UK – to tell you unpalatable truths. 

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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