Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

TODAY IN FRANCE

Aujourd’hui: What’s happening in France on Wednesday

Welcome to the round-up of everything that is happening in France today.

Published: 25 November 2020 16:31 CET
Aujourd'hui: What's happening in France on Wednesday
Photo: AFP

President Emmanuel Macron did a TV appearance last night and laid out a roadmap for ending France's second lockdown.

His speech was watched by 29 million people, not far off half the population of France (although it must be said that we're low on alternative entertainment at present).

His plan is a three-step process, with each gradual loosening of restrictions depending on case numbers staying low, ending (hopefully) with the lifting of the lockdown and making travel and visiting family and friends possible again.

Here are the key points;

Politics

In other news, French Prime Minister Jean Castex has said he will ask the country’s constitutional court to examine the highly controversial security bill that could ban the publication of images of police officers.

The issue has been thrown into sharp focus by shocking scenes of violence as police dismantled a migrant camp in central Paris on Monday.

The below cartoon from Libération's Willem sums it up, showing the interior minister watching footage of the police at the migrant camp and saying 'Shocking! I can't believe my eyes, inappropriate behaviour from police, not blurred. Fortunately there are people there to film it'. 

 

 

GAFA tax

France says it will apply its ‘digital tax’ to online giants like Facebook and Amazon on their 2020 earnings.

This tax – which essentially seeks to get the 'GAFA' – Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple – to pay tax in the countries where they earn their revenues, rather than picking a low-tax country to declare all their European earnings in, has been a massive bone of contention between France and the USA, with the Americans threatening tariffs on French goods in return.

Language

Our word of the day is one for the risk-taker in your life.

Notre Dame

The team behind the restoration of Paris' fire-damaged Notre-Dame cathedral have shared this amazing time-lapse video of their work over the last 18 months.

 

Olympics 2024

And we’re looking ahead – all the way to 2024 when hopefully the pandemic will be a distant memory and the Olympics comes to Paris. Here’s a roundup of where the events will be held and which one will be under the Eiffel Tower.

 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

SHOW COMMENTS