Political tensions in France: revelations about Jordan Bardella, pension reforms and budgetary debates

In response to Emmanuel Macron, who on Wednesday called on RN leaders to “clarify the line, the words, the people in their party” after the publication of anti-Semitic messages attributed to RN president Jordan Bardella, the latter declared to our colleagues from Le Parisien: “After October 7, 2023, I walked in the streets of Paris, not him.”

Jordan Bardella refers to the march against anti-Semitism on November 12, 2023, in which the flame party participated, but in which the President of the Republic refused to join.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called on leaders of the National Rally to “clarify the line, the words, the people in their party”, after the publication of anti-Semitic messages attributed to RN President Jordan Bardella, which he described as “extremely serious and unacceptable”.

“The comments that have been reported are obviously extremely serious and unacceptable, and they do not tolerate any comments whatsoever, they call for the most extreme condemnation,” declared the head of state during a joint press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, in Madrid.

He also deplored “the linguistic violence” of the RN on Mediapart, at the origin of the investigation, which “always leads to an escalation”, judging “unacceptable to have violent words towards opponents, political adversaries” and “to attack those who are in part the organizers of this debate”, the media.

Northern senator Patrick Kanner was reappointed Wednesday as president of the socialist group in the Senate, the leading opposition force in the upper house, we learned from within the group. The president of the LR group, Mathieu Darnaud, is also back. If the leader of the senatorial right, the first group in the Senate, was alone in the running, Patrick Kanner had to get rid of a competitor within the PS group.

The former minister of François Hollande, aged 69, won against Val-d'Oise senator Rachid Temal in a vote, with 39 votes against 19 for his competitor from the same PS movement, according to several internal sources. He will serve a fourth term at the head of the PS senators, after his first election in 2018 to this position.

Already 800 registered according to the organizers. Florence Portelli, LR mayor of Taverny, launches a reflection club on ecology, Saturday in Amboise (Indre-et-Loire), in the presence of several political figures. Jean-Louis Borloo, Valérie Pécresse, Yann Wehrling and Christophe Béchu are announced to put “Green Power” on track.

“We are launching this think tank, rallied by local elected officials from the right and center right, to say that ecology is a major subject. We all know that there is a concrete right-wing approach on the ground. Because this right-wing ecology is practiced every day in our cities. It is an ecology of growth which defends heritage and which opposes the decreasing vision of the Greens, who are losing town halls because of their wokist ideas,” judges the elected representative from the Ile-de-France region.

The president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet “never believed” in the theory of an RN “shield of the Jewish community” and estimated on Wednesday that millions of French people had been “fooled” by the party’s de-demonization strategy.

“I’m waiting for Mediapart to be able to show us the evidence it has. Jordan Bardella will defend himself, it is his right, but the Republic has the right to know who is hiding behind its political leaders. We cannot tolerate personalities who are responsible and anti-Semitic,” reacted Ms. Braun-Pivet on Franceinfo.

The reform proposed by Édouard Philippe is the most demanding of all those proposed by the candidates in the presidential election. More responsible than Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen who promise a costly step back, more frank than Gabriel Attal, who cautiously skirts the question of legal age, clearer than Bruno Retailleau, who distinguishes between a minimum starting age (63 years) and a full starting age (65 years), the Horizons candidate shows himself to be the best bidder and the most complete by assuming two high cursors – 65 years for the legal age and forty-five years of contributions.

Gabriel Attal criticized on Wednesday the pension reform proposed by his competitor Édouard Philippe, believing that it is “the Macron proposal of 2022” and “that we are no longer taking palliative care measures”.

The activity bonus will not be indexed to inflation in the draft budget presented on Thursday, Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou said on France 2 on Wednesday, adding that priority would be given “to the most deprived”.

While the inflation of everyday products continues to squeeze household budgets, the Minister of Purchasing Power, Trade and SMEs, Serge Papin, justified the merits of the debate on a measure which risks increasing the cost of the Shopping Cart: the tax on sweet products, which the government could present to the Council of Ministers on Thursday.

Fabrice Arfi, co-head of the Mediapart investigations department, promises Wednesday September 30 on Franceinfo that “the rest of the revelations are coming”. “There will be a demonstration of what we have written,” he assures. The journalist specifies that this investigation is the result of several months of work since the spring, using “documentary sources” and “different human sources”.