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France expels Palestinian activist to Egypt

France on Friday expelled a Palestinian activist to Egypt after a protracted court battle over her presence, police said.

Published: 11 November 2023 10:01 CET

France expels Palestinian activist to Egypt

Mariam Abou Daqqa, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (FPLP), arrives at the Noailles police station in Marseille on October 16, 2023. Photo: Christophe SIMON/AFP.

Mariam Abu Daqqa, 72, is a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which is considered a “terrorist” organisation by the European Union.

Abu Daqqa was detained by police on Wednesday night after the State Council, France’s highest administrative court, overturned a lower court ruling that had suspended an interior ministry expulsion order.

Abu Daqqa had a 50 day visa to visit France to take part in conferences on the Middle East conflict. The ministry said that her presence was a risk after the deadly October 7 Hamas attacks against Israel.

READ ALSO: France hosts Gaza aid conference that presses for ‘humanitarian pause

She took part in two conferences that had been banned while in France.

Reached by phone at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport as she awaited a flight to Cairo, Abu Daqqa slammed her expulsion as “an attack against the right of Palestine to have a state, an identity, an existence”.

“The process that I have undergone is not worthy of a democratic government,” she said.

Her lawyers, Elsa Marcel and Marie David, told AFP they would launch further appeals and even take the case to the European Court of Human rights.

France, which has large Jewish and Muslim populations, has seen a spike in tensions amid the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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S&P downgrades French credit rating in blow to Macron

In a statement, the American credit assessor justified its decision to drop France’s long-term sovereign debt rating from “AA” to “AA-” on concerns over lower-than-expected growth.

It warned that “political fragmentation” would make it difficult for the government to implement planned reforms to balance public finances and forecast the budget deficit would remain above the targeted three percent of GDP in 2027.

The S&P’s first downgrade of France since 2013 puts the EU’s second-largest economy on par with the Czech Republic and Estonia but above Spain and Italy.

The announcement will sting for Macron, who has staked a reputation as an economic reformer capable of restoring France’s accounts after low growth and high spending.

The risk of a ratings downgrade had been looming for several quarters, with the previous “AA” assessment given a “negative outlook”.

The surprise slippage in the public deficit for 2023 to 5.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) instead of the expected 4.9 percent did not play in the government’s favour.

France’s general government debt will increase to about 112 percent of GDP by 2027, up from around 109 percent in 2023, “contrary to our previous expectations”, the agency added.

Responding to the downgrade decision, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire reaffirmed the government’s commitment to slashing the public deficit to below three percent by 2027.

“Our strategy remains the same: reindustrialise, achieve full employment and keep to our trajectory to get back under the three percent deficit in 2027,” he said in an interview with newspaper Le Parisien, insisting that nothing would change in the daily lives of the French.

Le Maire claimed the downgrade was primarily driven by the government’s abundant spending during the Covid pandemic to provide a lifeline to businesses and French households.

The main reason for the downgrade was because “we saved the French economy,” he said.

Government critics offered a different rationale.

“This is where the pitiful management of public finances by the Macron/Le Maire duo gets us!” Eric Ciotti, head of the right-wing Republicans party, wrote on social media platform X.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen called the Macron administration’s handling of public finances “catastrophic” and denounced the government as being “as incompetent as they are arrogant”.

A credit downgrade risks putting off investors and making it more difficult to pay off debt.

Earlier this year, influential ratings agencies Moody’s and Fitch spared handing France a lower note.

S&P also maintained its “stable” outlook for France on Friday on “expectations that real economic growth will accelerate and support the government’s budgetary consolidation”, albeit not enough to bring down its high debt-to-GDP ratio.

“S&P’s downgrading of France’s debt simply reflects an imperative that we are already aware of: the need to continue restoring our public finances,” Public Accounts Minister Thomas Cazenave wrote in a statement sent to AFP.

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