Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
There are said to be six million rats in Paris. I met one last week when I was retrieving some winter clothes from a bag in my cellar. Neither of us was particularly keen to make the other’s acquaintance. Such a brief encounter may not please the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. In the
Last Saturday in Paris a police officer leapt from his car and levelled his handgun at a baying mob. The thugs backed off long enough for the policeman and his colleagues to make good their escape. The chief of the Paris police, Laurent Nunez, praised the officer’s ‘sang-froid’ in successfully extracting his team from
Suella Braverman is right. The United Nations Refugee Convention is no longer fit for purpose. As the Home Secretary will explain today in an address to the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, the convention makes a mockery of genuine refugees. ‘Simply being gay, a woman or fearful of discrimination’ is enough
Pope Francis spent the weekend in Marseille where he admonished Europe for their attitude towards migrants. Specifically, the Pontiff took to task those who used words such as ‘invasion’ and ‘emergency’ when discussing the millions of migrants who have arrived in Europe in the last decade. ‘Those who risk their lives at sea do not
King Charles arrived in Paris today on the first stage of a three day state visit to France, a country his mother adored. The French media view the trip as a chance to repair Anglo-French relations, which according to the front page of Liberation have been ‘strained since Brexit’. The general tone of the
It is Keir Starmer’s misfortune that he arrives in Paris today for a meeting with Emmanuel Macron at the moment Europe faces one of its gravest challenges of recent years. More than 11,000 migrants have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the last week, an unprecedented influx that has exposed the deep divisions within
Emmanuel Macron was in Lille on Thursday evening to watch France defeat Uruguay as the Bleus made it two wins from two in the Rugby World Cup. The president was photographed swigging from a bottle of beer, just your normal rugby fan enjoying the game. Rugby fans and their president have little in common. He
It is almost three years to the day since Ursula von der Leyen gave her inaugural State of the Union address in Brussels. The newly elected President of the European Commission touched on many subjects on September 16, 2020, among which was the migrant crisis, ‘an issue that has been discussed long enough’. It was
In May this year 87,000 asylum applications were lodged with the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA). This was a 24 per cent increase on the number of claims made in May 2022. Syrians, Afghans, Ivorians and Guineans were heavily represented among those making claims, but there was also a remarkable number of South
Emmanuel Macron is not happy. He would love to run for a third term as president but the French constitution precludes such a prospect. Last week, he described the rules as ‘bloody disastrous’, a declaration that earned the president a reprimand from Nicolas Sarkozy in a television interview on Wednesday. The former president has been
The details of King Charles’ state visit to France later this month were announced on Wednesday. His Majesty’s deputy private secretary, Chris Fitzgerald said that the occasion state will celebrate the countries’ ‘shared histories, culture and values’. One thing France and Britain haven’t shared for many years is the same view on school uniform. We
Emmanuel Macron spent Monday morning in the presence of the French rugby team and for once he spoke without ambiguity. ‘You are the best prepared team in the world,’ he told them at their training camp south of Paris. ‘You’ll be brothers in arms, fighting from the first minute to the last. The team is
Rental e-scooters have been banned from Paris since Friday after residents of the French capital were asked to decide their fate in a referendum. The vote, held in April, attracted a low turnout, with only 103,000 of the city’s 1.38 million men and women bothering to cast their ballot. Of those that did, however, 90 per
The intellectual infirmity that has laid low much of Europe’s left this century had been painfully exposed this week in France. On Monday, the country’s new minister of education, Gabriel Attal, announced that when pupils return to the classroom next week none will be permitted to wear the abaya, a conservative form of Islamic dress that
In a curious way the decline of English rugby mirrors that of the Conservative party. Four years ago there was a spring in the step of both. England had trounced the All Blacks in the semi-final of the World Cup in Japan, and although they lost to South Africa in the final a week later
It’s been a brutal month in France but one would barely know it from the reaction of much of the political and media class. Their attention has been focused on a rapper called Médine, who was invited at the start of August to appear at the Green party’s summer conference, which opened in the Channel
The timing could not have been worse for Rishi Sunak. Just days after it was confirmed by Downing Street that the Prime Minister would host Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in the autumn, a human rights organisation published an extensive report accusing Saudi Arabia of the ‘mass killing’ of migrants at its border with Yemen. The
Rishi Sunak has failed in his pledge to ‘Stop the Boats’, and the £480 million deal he signed with France in March is nothing more than a gargantuan waste of money. In fact, the French have intercepted fewer migrants in the Channel this year than they did in 2022. If the Prime Minister is truly committed
The British government is reportedly ‘frustrated’ with France for its failure to stem the numbers of migrants making their way illegally across the Channel. What’s new? It’s a gripe going back years and the solution has always been the same: to throw more money to France in return for a solemn promise from Paris that
The first time Mohamed Bazoum came to the attention of the European media was in the aftermath of the Great Migrant Crisis of 2015. The man who was, until a fortnight ago, the president of Niger, was at that time the minister of the interior. The shockwaves of a war in Niger would be
