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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: Energy crisis, the next holidays and chocolatines

In the week that France went back to work, our newsletter Inside France takes a look at energy rationing, climate plans, wine sales, cross-Channel chat and dodgy French jokes about pastries.

Published: 3 September 2022 10:21 CEST
Inside France: Energy crisis, the next holidays and chocolatines
France went back to work and school this week. Photo by LOIC VENANCE / 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.

Happy returns

France is now back at work after the summer break – shops have reopened, offices are fully staffed and the kids are heading back to school (staggering slightly under the weight of all that stationery the French government insists that parents buy).

Loving the vibes from broadcaster BFMTV, which is literally counting the days until the next holiday.

Sober start

The government has also gone back to work, with sobriété energétique (energy sobriety) the main focus – in other words how France can cut its energy use to get through a winter without Russian gas, and in the longer term tackle the climate crisis.

We don’t know the exact details of the plan yet, but Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne started the week with a speech to business leaders, in which she outlined how businesses will be expected to have their ‘sobriety plans’ – detailing how they will cut their energy use – ready for October 1st.

Although the fuel shortage following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the immediate crisis – and householders have been reassured that there will be no power cuts this winter – the plan also looks to the future and the increasingly obvious need for all countries to cut their emissions to tackle the climate crisis.

Borne began her speech with a simple outline of the summer we have just had – record-breaking heatwaves, the worst drought in 60 years, raging wildfires and fatal storms – to underline the necessity for action. 

Exemplary Britain

It’s always exciting when your country is held up as an international example, right? Unfortunately for Brits, the UK is now being used in France as an example of what governments should not do in relation to the energy crisis, with politicians including government spokesman Olivier Véran reassuring the French that “what is happening in the UK [with soaring energy bills] will not happen in France”.

Wine

Other than la rentrée, the other thing that happens every September in France is both the wine harvest and the Foire aux vins – this is essentially a sale when retailers including supermarkets clear out their shelves ready for the new wines, and it’s a great place to grab a bargain, or maybe to get a deal on some wines that are normally out of your price bracket. 

The sex files

You might have heard the stories about Donald Trump having ‘secret intelligence’ on Emmanuel Macron’s sex life? Given that the only evidence that this exists is the word of notorious liar Trump we’re probably not going to dignify that with too much analysis, other than to flag up this seemingly quite relevant scene from one of our favourite French TV shows Au Service de la France (available on Netflix).

Podcast

For fans of our Talking France podcast there is some good news – it’s back from its summer break. We’re working on a new episode that will be out next week, and in the meantime you can catch up with old episodes HERE.

Blague de papa

And let’s finish with a terrible French joke, courtesy of the national police’s airborne unit.

“Did you know? At breakfast for the gendarmerie there is an exactly equal number of pain au chocolat and chocolatine, so as not to offend early morning sensibilities” – the joke being, of course, that a pain au chocolat and a chocolatine is exactly the same thing.

What you call the delicious chocolatey breakfast pastry, however, is the subject of fierce regional debate. 

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: French lose the plot, sports stars speak out and Paris prices fall

From the latest on the increasingly crazy French elections to the powers of a president, the influence of sports stars and the lustre of the Olympics, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Published: 22 June 2024 10:54 CEST
Inside France: French lose the plot, sports stars speak out and Paris prices fall

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.

Losing the plot?

Welcome to another crazy week in French politics – I’m not saying that this election is getting to me, but the other night I dreamed I was having an argument with far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I think I need a holiday.

France might need a holiday too – the political discourse is getting increasingly wild, leading to our columnist John Lichfield to declare that the country has “taken leave of its senses”. 

Latest polling suggests that Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party would take the biggest vote share at 33 percent, followed by the increasingly fragile leftist coalition Nouveau Front Populaire with 29 percent and then Emmanuel Macron’s centrist group with 22 percent. Those figures would give none of the blocks an overall majority, instead leading to a total parliamentary deadlock.

French election breakdown: All the latest from the campaign trail

Earlier this week ‘Article 16 of the constitution’ was trending on French Twitter; this is the one that lays out the powers afforded to the president versus the prime minister, as people tried to work out what – if any – decisions Macron would be able to take in the final three years of his mandate.

READ ALSO: What does a French prime minister actually do

The satirical magazine Le Canard Enchâiné perhaps sums it up best in its cartoon, showing a man about to shoot himself in the head with a gun labelled ‘Rassemblement National’ and saying “We never tried this before”.

The Canard Enchainé’s cartoon as posted on Instagram

Sports stars engaged

On a more positive note, it’s been nice to see France’s biggest sports stars use their platforms to encourage people to vote, and speaking out against hatred and intolerance and in favour of diversity and inclusion.

I could not disagree more with the Spain goalkeeper Unai Simon, who criticised Kylian Mbappé’s call for people to vote against the far right, saying that footballers should “leave politics to other people”.

The whole point of living in a democracy is that politics belongs to everybody. As Mbappé said: “The Euros are very important in our careers, but first and foremost we are citizens and I don’t think we can be disconnected from the world around us.”

And I admit I’m biased about this – I’ve been a fan ever since I saw him make his professional debut at the age of 18 in my then-hometown of Castres – but I was also pleased to see French rugby legend Antoine Dupont taking a stand on another social issue, appearing on the front cover of LGBTQ magazine Têtu to decry homophobia (although the cover photo did rather make him look like he had forgotten his shades and was squinting into bright sunlight).

Talking France

We of course discuss all the election latest with John Lichfield in the latest episode of the Talking France podcast – and in what was perhaps linked to my need for a holiday we’re also discussing places to visit in France this summer.

Amid warnings of over-tourism we’re taking a look at the places predicted to be most crowded this summer – and suggesting some alternatives. Listen here or on the link below.

Fun and Games

It was thought that people might avoid Paris this summer – but the combination of good deals on the Olympic ticket resale site plus travel and accommodation costs dropping back to seasonal norms has seen a flurry of people booking a last-minute trip to the Games.

Personally I always thought the ‘everyone fleeing the capital’ narrative was a little over-played, but it’s been interesting to see that attempted price-gouging has also largely failed – at the start of the year there were Airbnb listings for frankly insane prices (I saw one that was €7,000 for two weeks), while now costs are largely at the summer average.

Paris travel deals to take advantage of as prices fall ahead of Olympics

Wrestling 

If you’re a Games fan I highly recommend the temporary exhibition at Paris’ Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration (a strong contender for the capital’s best museum, in my opinion) on the history of Olympics and their politics.

It also includes this statue which we’re told depicts ‘wrestling’ at the Olympics in antiquity. If you say so . . .

Photo: The Local

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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