Professor John Keiger is the former research director of the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge. He is the author of France and the Origins of the First World War.
The feigned outrage in Berlin – but mostly in Paris – at the USA’s proxy use of Denmark’s intelligence services to intercept submarine cable traffic to spy on European leaders raises more than a wry smile. Allies have always spied on allies for legitimate reasons. Few have done so, and continue to do so, as
‘What is grave about this situation, Messieurs, is that it is not serious’, was how General de Gaulle addressed his cabinet following the attempted putsch des généraux in April 1961. That could equally apply to recent Franco-British ructions over fishing rights in the Channel Islands. It is mere gesture politics, for all the French retaliatory threats
On 21 April 1961 France’s most senior generals staged a putsch in French Algiers, still an integral part of France. The military coup was in reaction to the policies of the president of the Republic, General de Gaulle, and his belated decision to abandon Algeria to independence. The generals felt this betrayed their honour and
A Marine Le Pen victory in a year’s time can no longer be ruled out. Other than opinion polls regularly pointing to her place in the second round as a certainty, a few, such as Harris Interactive on 7 March, put her on the cusp of winning the second round with 47 per cent to Macron’s 53
May 5th this year will be the two hundredth anniversary of Napoleon’s death on Saint Helena, the tiny island in the south Atlantic where the British confined the Emperor to Longwood House after defeat at Waterloo in 1815. After much hesitation, Emmanuel Macron has decided that France will commemorate the Emperor’s place in French history.
In 1991, at the height of the first Gulf War, the EU demonstrated to the world its divisions and helplessness, as Belgium infamously blocked the export of munitions to the UK, then at war in the Gulf. They quickly came to regret it. The Belgian Foreign Minister subsequently remarked tellingly: ‘Europe is an economic giant,
Michel Barnier – still officially the EU’s Brexit taskforce leader – gives few interviews. As a Savoyard and keen mountaineer, as he habitually reminds us, he is a cautious man who advances step by step with the long climb firmly in his sights. So it was something of a surprise to see him appear on
The latest salvos have been fired in the EU’s battle to drain the City of London’s financial business. Brussels – with France at the helm – has long cherished imposing a continental blockade on Britain’s financial access to the EU. But, like Napoleon’s 1806 embargo on British trade to the continent, things are not that
The latest French opinion poll puts Marine Le Pen on around 26 per cent, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron on 23 per cent when it comes to voting intention for the 2022 presidential race. This reverses Macron’s 2017 first-round score of 24 per cent and Le Pen on 21.3 per cent. Of course, Macron won the second round convincingly
France is having a torrid pandemic with a succession of failures, from PPE equipment to vaccine invention, a stalled vaccination programme and now interminable and frustrating hesitation over a third lockdown. But we, and the French, should focus on the many things they do get right. Traducing Mark Antony’s speech to the Romans, it is
France is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council not to have developed a coronavirus vaccine, and it hurts. USA: two; UK: one; Russia: one; China: one, France nul points. To make matters worse, France also has an embarrassing international ranking in the number of its citizens it has vaccinated. ‘France is the laughing stock
What does 2021 hold for the European Union? At the end of 2020 Brussels has gone out of its way to engage in unity-signalling, announcing that all 27 members will begin vaccination on the same day and feigning a united front in the face of the UK’s new strain of coronavirus. But in truth its
Britain and France are heading for an almighty bust-up over Brexit. This morning the French junior minister for European affairs, Clément Beaune, specifically confirmed that if France was unhappy with the final Brexit deal — notably on fishing — it would use its veto. France would carry out ‘her own evaluation’ of the deal and
For four years, president Donald Trump radicalised international relations. There was a shift towards the nation state and unilateralism, beginning with the United States. He viewed intergovernmental organisations like the WHO or the World Trade Organization with acute scepticism thanks to what he saw as their bureaucratic sloth and partisanship. His perception of the European Union and Nato was
It can’t be much fun being a national leader these days. Be it the US, the UK, all are assailed on myriad fronts by coronavirus, widespread societal division and impending economic ruin. But being president of France takes the biscuit. Since 2014, France is fighting a war against Islamist extremists in the Sahel. 5,100 French troops
This new world disorder is distorting our vision, so please excuse an apparently fatuous question. Is Emmanuel Macron turning into Donald Trump? As the 45th President of the US prepares to step down from the world stage he may be leaving behind another disciple – Emmanuel Macron (Trump would say a ‘mini-me’). The comparison is
Second lockdowns are increasingly difficult for democratic governments to impose and maintain. Violent anti-lockdown demonstrations in Spain and Italy have hit the headlines recently. It was with considerable trepidation, then, that French political leaders ordered France’s second lockdown to begin at midnight last Thursday. It did not help that Macron like Boris had repeatedly said
France is the most rigorously secular state of the democratic world. Separation of Church and State enshrined in the famous 1905 law was the result of over a century of hostility between the Catholic Church and the French State. Mutual hostility began with the 1789 French Revolution. Until then monarchical France bathed in the glory
The suspected terrorist attack in Nice’s Notre Dame Basilica this morning appears to be the third such incident in France in the last few weeks. Two female worshippers and a man thought to be the Basilica’s sexton had their throats slit by an assassin who, it is claimed, cried ‘Allahu Akbar’ after being shot and wounded by
In the course of his three-and-a-half year presidency, Emmanuel Macron must have the record for the most number of international states antagonised in the shortest time. From eastern Europe to the United States via Brexit he has the knack of putting states’ backs up by a mixture of outdated Gaullian pomposity, lesson-giving and base tactlessness.
