Why is the opposition to same-sex marriage so strong in France?

To the rest of the world, France is a virtual billboard for sexual freedom and sophistication. Sex, of course, made an entire generation or two of French and European cinema — from Les enfants terribles to Jules et Jim to Last Tango in Paris.  Paris, for nearly a century, has been the world’s premier city of romance, and its [...]

Four reasons why Cope’s narrow Sunday win of France’s UMP leadership could be ruinous

After a tense Monday during which both candidates declared victory and accused the other of fraud, it appears that Jean-François Copé (pictured above) has emerged as the presumptive leader of the French right. With just a 98-vote margin, Copé won the election for general secretary of the center-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP, Union for [...]

The French right prepares to choose Sarkozy’s successor (maybe)

France’s center-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP, Union for a popular movement) will vote on Sunday, November 18 to choose its next general secretary in what’s widely seen as a fight to get the upper hand on the UMP’s presidential nomination in 2017.  The UMP will choose between two key figures — former prime minister François [...]

Is Bavarian finance minister Markus Söder really the most dangerous politician in Europe?

Der Spiegel ranks the top 10 most dangerous politicians in Europe, and you might be surprised at who comes out on top. The piece targets Markus Söder, the finance minister of Bavaria since November 2011: The politician from the [Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern (CSU, the Christian Social Union)], the conservative sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian [...]

Final thoughts on French parliamentary runoff results

As noted in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s parliament elections, the French left looked likely to take a narrow absolute majority of seats in the Assemblée nationale. As it turns out, the Parti socialiste of François Hollande did even better — it and its allies took 314 seats, not including the 17 seats that its electoral partner, France’s Green [...]

Final French parliamentary election results for first round

France has now had a full day since learning the results of Sunday’s first round of the French parliamentary elections (France votes again in the second round this coming Sunday), and there’s really not much surprise in the aggregate result. Much as predicted: the Parti socialiste of newly inaugurated François Hollande narrowly led the first round [...]

Le Pen and Mélenchon battle in Hénin-Beaumont precinct highlights four-way French campaign

The most interesting contest in Sunday’s first round of the French parliamentary election may well be the most irrelevant to determining whether President François Hollande’s center-left or the center-right will control the Assemblée nationale — but it also showcases that the far-left and far-right are both playing the strongest role in over a decade in any [...]

Warning signs for Hollande in French parliamentary campaign

The campaign for French parliamentary elections kicked off just last Monday, for what most observers believe is a formality in installing the newly inaugurated President François Hollande’s Parti socialiste as the majority of the Assemblée nationale. French voters go to the polls this Sunday for the first of two rounds — in each parliamentary district, if no candidate [...]

Who is Jean-Marc Ayrault?

On a day that François Hollande was inaugurated and held his first meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel, his appointment of a new prime minister in Jean-Marc Ayrault may be the third-most important news of day in French politics. Nonetheless, Ayrault’s appointment to lead Hollande’s government is the first clear sign we have of how [...]

Could François Fillon have won Sunday’s French presidential election?

When I look at the final tally of votes in Sunday’s French presidential election – François Hollande took nearly 52% of the vote against incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy’s 48% — I cannot help but note that the margin is actually lower than in 2007, when Sarkozy beat Ségolène Royal with 53% of the vote. It’s quite stunning — [...]

Three elections — and three defeats — for EU-wide austerity

The concept of a ‘democratic deficit’ has long plagued the European Union — the EU’s history is littered with grand, transformative schemes planned by EU leaders that voters have ultimately rejected as too sweeping.  As recently as 2005, French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed EU constitution, smacking the EU elite for getting out too far [...]

Hollande and Sarkozy move beyond debate: motion without movement

French presidential finalists — incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Parti socialiste candidate François Hollande — faced off Wednesday night in what commentators are calling the most animated debate in the history of French presidential debates. In short, Sarkozy jumped into the arena as attack dog on any number of issues – defending his record on the economy in [...]

France presidential first-round campaign comes to an end

French voters go to the polls on Sunday for the first round of the presidential election. While the French media has been fixated on rules that would prohibit the early publishing of exit poll data on Sunday, and each candidate has been making a final push for votes, there’s not so much to analyze in [...]

Marine Le Pen and the youth vote

With 10 days to go until the French election, and with presumably more pressing topics to discuss, the campaign’s narrative has turned once again to Front national candidate Marine Le Pen — and her surprisingly strong support among the youngest voters. According to a poll published in Le Monde earlier this week, Le Pen wins [...]

France’s election — three weeks to go

It’s been a while since I’ve posted much about France’s upcoming presidential election, and in large part that’s because the past week has been somewhat subdued in the wake of the Toulouse shooting. But there are three weeks left until the first round and almost five weeks left until the runoff, with a parliamentary election [...]