Macron to launch 'charm offensive' to try and win back the French
In the two-and-a-half hour show on primetime TV, the president will take part in a wide-ranging debate with the following people; union leader Sophie Binet, fitness influencer Tibo InShape, far-right mayor Robert Ménard, lobbyist Agnès Verdier-Molinié, and left-wing essayist Salomé Saqué.
Chaired by journalist Gilles Bouleau, the debate is set to cover subjects ranging from immigration to sport in schools, pension to reforms to changes in France's right-to-die laws. Broadcaster TF1 has moved its scheduled programme, the highly popular desert island survival show Koh-Lanta, to make room for the debate.
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It is also believed that Macron will announce a referendum or series of referendums on important questions facing France - possible topics include screen time for children, work legislation and changes to France's right-to-die laws (which are already making their way through parliament).
As
previously announced
, he also wants to set up a citizens' council to look at the organisation of the French school year and whether children get too much holiday time.
After several months where the president has seemed more active on the international than the domestic stage, his calendar for the next week includes multiple trips around France to meet members of the public - a trend that his office has indicated is likely to continue over the coming weeks.
In addition to attending the annual Choose France business summit in Paris, Macron will also visit Nanterre, Caen and Vendin-le-Vieil this week, with a focus on measures to tackle organise crime as he pays tribute to prison guards.
Macronist MP Karl Olive
told French newspaper Le Parisien
: "The president had donned the captain's armband at European level, and now he's making a comeback in France. I think he's been reinvigorated."
Since the loss of his parliamentary majority in disastrous snap elections in summer 2024, Macron has been facing a deadlocked parliament and
approval ratings of just 26 percent
.
In recent weeks early campaigning has stepped up for the next presidential elections, which are now less than two years away. Although Macron himself cannot stand for a third time, he is keen to make use of the final two years of his mandate, and secure a centrist successor.
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France 24
39 minutes ago
- France 24
Children ‘subjected to monstrosities': Report exposes decades of abuse in French schools
French lawmakers on Wednesday accused the state of "structural dysfunctions" in handling child abuse in schools, delivering a scathing 330-page report that chronicles decades of systemic violence and silence across France's educational institutions. 'Children across France were subjected to monstrosities,' wrote the committee president, Fatiha Keloua Hachi, describing the three-month investigation as a 'deep dive into the unthinkable'. The probe, led by centrist Violette Spillebout from Macron's ruling party Renaissance, and Paul Vannier, a lawmaker with the hard-left France Unbowed party (LFI), heard testimony from 140 people, including survivors. While abuse occurred in both public and private schools, the MPs said Catholic institutions were especially affected, citing 'stricter educational models' and a persistent 'law of silence'. In many cases, they said, it wasn't just the children who kept quiet but also school officials, clergy and civil servants who failed to act or actively covered up wrongdoing. Historian Claude Lelièvre traced this back to the culture of silence and obedience in religious teaching orders. "They viewed obedience as a cardinal virtue, both for themselves and for their students. Obedience at all costs. Obedience to someone who, in their eyes, was the lieutenant of God on earth," he said. Public schools, by contrast, embraced a different philosophy. "It wasn't about obeying a person," Lelièvre said, "but helping children consent to shared rules." The Bétharram case Much of the report focuses on the Bétharram Catholic boarding school in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region, where priests, teachers and staff are accused of having sexually and physically abused students from 1957 to 2004. According to the MPs, some 200 complaints have been filed since the beginning of the year. Victims described acts of 'unprecedented severity, of absolute sadism'. Lawmakers called Bétharram a "textbook example" of the state's failure to prevent and monitor abuse, warning that the same systemic flaws "are still in place today". Prime Minister François Bayrou, who was education minister from 1993 to 1997 and sent some of his children to the school, has faced growing criticism. The report stops short of directly implicating him, but Spillebout and Vannier wrote: "In the absence of action from a minister who was informed and in a position to intervene, the abuse of students at Bétharram continued for years." Bayrou's eldest daughter, Helene Perlant, accused the clergy running the school of systemic abuse, saying a priest beat her during summer camp when she was 14. She said however her father did not know about the incident. In a footnote, Vannier accused Bayrou of having "knowingly misled" the National Assembly in March, when he initially claimed to have learned about the scandal "at the same time as everyone else, in the press". He later admitted he had received information, but said he had not grasped the seriousness of the allegations. Lack of figures and oversight Beyond Bétharram, the report highlights the state's failure to monitor abusive staff. Regional background checks allowed sanctioned teachers to move between schools undetected. "The Ministry of Education," the report said, "is still incapable of ensuring that a sanctioned teacher cannot simply be transferred to another school." This kind of administrative evasion has been going on for decades. "For a long time now, there has been a culture of cover-up, of transferring problematic staff, of not reporting incidents when they occurred," Lelièvre said. The committee also pointed to a lack of national data on abuse. 'No consolidated public data is available on violence committed against pupils by members of staff,' the report stated, urging the government to commission new surveys. Where data does exist — notably on sexual violence — the gap between official data and victimisation surveys is stark. While national surveys estimate 7,000 pupils are affected annually, state school leaders reported only 280 incidents in 2023-2024. 'The Ministry is not really tracking these issues thoroughly,' Lelièvre said. "The figures are inconsistent, and there's a lack of proper monitoring and understanding of what's happening. We need much more robust oversight, including independent monitoring, not just relying on the institution itself." Urgent recommendations To address what they call a "systemic culture of impunity", the MPs called for tighter background checks and the creation of a national reporting platform that would allow whistleblowers to bypass traditional hierarchies. 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Euronews
an hour ago
- Euronews
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Euronews
an hour ago
- Euronews
How could the US-China trade rearrangement affect Europe?
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