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‘Macron’s mean’: French PM gets rough ride at holiday school

France's Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Monday endured a sometimes abrupt reception at a boarding school taking on children during the Easter holidays as part of an experiment to stem youth violence.

Published: 22 April 2024 18:07 CEST

'Macron's mean': French PM gets rough ride at holiday school

France's Prime Minister Gabriel Attal meets pupils during a visit to the Parc Imperial High School in Nice, south-eastern France on April 22, 2024. (Photo by Valery HACHE / POOL / AFP)

The uncomfortable episode at the school also comes with Attal and his government under pressure to make their mark as the anti-immigration far-right National Rally party leaps ahead in polls for the June 9 European Parliament elections.

Such holiday schools are part of a plan aimed at keeping teens off the streets during France’s long school holidays after the country was shaken by a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers.

“There’s a violence problem among young people. Tackling the issue is one of my government’s biggest priorities,” Attal told a group of teenagers in uniform tracksuits as he visited the school in the southern city of Nice.

Attal, appointed by Macron in January as France’s youngest ever prime minister, was seen as a telegenic asset in the battle against the far-right.

But his own popularity ratings have been tanking in the recent weeks with the latest poll by Ipsos finding 34 percent approving his work in April, down four percent on March.

When he asked the group who was happy to be there for the Easter holidays, which started on April 20 in the Nice region, most replied in the negative.

“My mother forced me,” said one male student.

“My parents didn’t convince me to go, they forced me, that’s all. I have nothing to say. It was that or home,” said Rayan, 14.

“In any case, you are going to learn lots of things, you are going to do lots of activities,” insisted Attal, adding he was “sure that in the end, you will be happy to be there.”

Another boy seemed not to know who Attal was.

“Are you the mayor or the prime minister?” asked Saif, 13. “Me, I am the prime minister and the mayor, he is there,” said Attal frostily, gesturing to Nice mayor Christian Estrosi.

A young boy asked the former education minister what his job was and if he was rich, then what he thought of the president.

“Macron’s mean,” the boy said looking at his feet, in comments caught on camera and broadcast on the BFMTV television channel.

“What’s that? Why do you say that?” Attal replied as burly Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti moved towards the boy.

“Anyway here you’re going to learn lots,” Attal added.

He also reprimanded another boy for referring to the president simply as “Macron”. “We say Monsieur Macron as with all adults,” he said.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.