Latest news with #TalkingFrance
Local France
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Local France
Inside France: Air conditioning wars, football focus and balloons
Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article. Breezy assurances France's most recent heatwave has sparked a furious political debate about air conditioning - a facility that is not widespread in France, and is in fact actively resisted by a significant portion of the population. Until recently there wasn't much discussion about this, simply because it wasn't needed in much of the country. But France's hotter summers and longer and more intense heatwaves mean that air conditioning has come to the forefront of the political discussion. Advertisement Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National - a party that is extremely reluctant to even talk about the climate crisis that is driving those warming temperatures, and in fact actively opposes renewable energy sources like wind turbines - has come with a 'grand plan for air conditioning'. The debate that followed seems to me to be a neat illustration of the difficulty of combating the simplified rhetoric of the far-right. Put simply, the RN position is: "It's hot. Let's have more air conditioning." Meanwhile the position of the left and the centre is: "Yes, it's hot and people in high-risk groups may need air conditioning during a heatwave. However, air conditioning is bad for the environment and it won't solve the underlying problem which is climate change. We need to look for alternative solutions as well, while working to tackle climate change." The problem is that one of those positions is a lot easier to communicate than the other. Also, when it's stiflingly hot, your apartment feels like an inner circle of hell and you couldn't sleep last night because the temperature never fell below 30C, one of those positions is instinctively more attractive than the other. That doesn't make it right, though. Air conditioning is a sticking plaster at best that solves none of the underlying issues and makes the problem worse. Even if we discount the overall environmental impact of AC units (and we definitely shouldn't) there's the simple fact that the heat chucked out by these units raises the temperature for everyone. Sustained use of air conditioning for just 10 days raises the overall temperature of a city by up to 2.4C, according to environment agency Ademe . ANALYSIS: Why are the French resistant to air conditioning?✎ Summer 2025 Predicting the future is always hard but it does seem like France is in for another hot summer . We have a go at predicting what else summer 2025 may bring - from strikes to political drama - in the latest Talking France podcast. Listen here or on the link below. The podcast is now taking a break for summer, but we hope to be back in September. You can catch up on our back catalogue here , and if you like what you hear you might consider supporting us by becoming a member of The Local, or recommending us to family and friends, which will allow us to keep making it. Advertisement Football focus A post on Bskysocial. France take on England on Saturday in the Women's Euro 2025 and we have a handy guide for some French phrases to use while watching les bleues . Incidentally, this is an example of the beautiful efficiency of the French language - les bleus = the France men's team, les bleues = the France women's team, les bleuets = the France junior team. Allez les bleues ! READ ALSO : How to watch the women's Euro 2025 tournament on French TV✎ Balloon In my opinion, the perfect way to end a summer's day is to go and see La vasque - the Paris hot air balloon that was here during the Olympics and Paralympics - rise. It's sunset ascent is quite calm; there's no announcement or soundtrack, at the appointed time it simply gently floats upwards above the Tuileries, accompanied by a murmur of joy from the assembled crowd. This will happen every evening (weather permitting) until September. The balloon rising above the Tuileries at sunset, as the assembled crowd take photographs. Photo: The Local Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.
Local France
04-07-2025
- Local France
'Stuck at Charles de Gaulle' - Hundreds more flights cancelled as French air traffic controllers strike
Paris airports risk being even more severely affected than on the first day of the strike on Thursday, which was called by two minority unions calling for better working conditions and staffing. You can find a full breakdown of the cancellations here . Friday is the final day of school in France before the summer holidays, with many families planning an early getaway. The strike will end on July 5th, but there is likely to be knock-on disruption over the weekend. France's DGAC aviation authority said 933 flights departing from or arriving at French airports were cancelled on Thursday, some 10 percent of the total number of flights initially scheduled. READ ALSO Will there be more French air traffic control strikes this summer? Advertisement At Paris airports, passengers stared at departure boards loaded with cancellations to assess their options. "I came here on holiday to celebrate my wife's 40th birthday, but now I'm stuck at Charles de Gaulle Airport," said Julien Barthelemy, a passenger travelling to Marseille from New York, late Thursday. "I'm currently on the waiting list for three flights and am waiting for a spot on the next one to become available." French Prime Minister François Bayrou described the strike as "shocking". "Choosing the day when everyone goes on holiday to go on strike at air traffic control is taking the French hostage," he told BFMTV. You can listen to the team at The Local discuss the strike, and the likelihood of further action, on the Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below The effects of the strike are not limited to France and the stoppage has triggered hundreds of cancellations of flights that fly over the country. The European Airlines for Europe (A4E) association said 1,500 flights would be cancelled on Thursday and Friday in Europe, affecting 300,000 passengers. "French air traffic control already delivers some of Europe's worst delay figures and now the actions of a minority of French air traffic control workers will needlessly disrupt the holiday plans of thousands of people in France and across Europe," said A4E chief Ourania Georgoutsakou. Advertisement The association said the strikes also caused "almost 500,000 minutes" in delays in Europe on Thursday on nearly 33,000 commercial flights. Ryanair, Europe's largest airline by passenger numbers, said it had cancelled more than 400 flights. "These strikes are unacceptable," said Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary, urging the EU Commission to protect such overflights by law in case of strikes. "Of these 400 flight cancellations, 350 would not be cancelled if the EU protected overflights over France." The two unions taking part in the strike action - which between them represent around 30 percent of air traffic controllers - are calling for "a change of course to reinforce staffing levels, bring technical modernisation projects to fruition, and put operational priorities back at the heart of decision-making at the Direction Générale de l'Aviation Civile [the French civil aviation authority]." The unions also "denounce the managerial excesses within the Directorate of Air Navigation Services, whose authoritarian, brutal management style, reneging on its commitments and disconnected from operational realities, maintains a climate of constant pressure and mistrust incompatible with the serenity and safety requirements of the air traffic controller's profession."
Local France
02-07-2025
- Local France
OPINION: Brittany's killer seaweed reveals the dirty secret of French farming
Fourteen years ago I spent a day on a pretty beach in Brittany. I was not swimming or sun-bathing. I was, it turns out, risking my life. I described the Plage de Saint-Maurice at the time as 'the symbol of an ecological calamity which has been 40 years in the making'. 'On a sunny August day,' I wrote in 2011. 'There was not a soul walking on the sand, not a single sunbather, not a single child with a bucket or spade.' Just below the surface crust of the beach lay a seam of evil-smelling black mud, formed by rotting seaweed. Ecological campaigners were complaining that the weed – natural to the French coast but supersized by nitrogen-drenched effluent from Breton farms – was a threat to human life. Listen to John and the team at The Local France discussing the Breton beach problem on the Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below Yves-Marie Le Lay, one of the campaigners, met me on the beach wearing a gas mask. He said: 'No one is removing all of this filth. Why? It is as if they are waiting for a child to die.' Advertisement Five years later, in September 2016, someone did die near the Plage de Saint-Maurice in Saint-Brieuc Bay. It was not a child but a 50-year-old jogger and father of three, Jean-René Auffray. The cause of his death has been disputed for nine years. A few days ago, a court in Nantes ruled that he was killed by seaweed. More specifically, the court decided that he had died from inhaling hydrogen sulphide, a toxic gas emitted by rotting heaps of ulva, or sea lettuce. The judges of the Nantes administrative court said that Monsieur Auffray was 40 percent to blame for his own death because he ignored warnings about running near the closed beach. They decided that the French state was 60 percent responsible because it had failed to enforce French and European environmental controls on intensive agriculture. This was a very important ruling, the first of its kind in France. It draws embarrassing attention to one of the great, institutional hypocrisies of French public life. France, we are told is a beautiful country of small, traditional family farms and quality food. Yes it is - in some places. Elsewhere, especially in Brittany and the chemical-soaked prairies of the Île-de-France and northern France, it is an intensive producer of cereals, sugar-beet and pork by methods which spoil the countryside and devastate the environment. French rivers are among the most polluted in Europe. The impact in Brittany is multiplied by the enclosed habitat of the peninsula. Nitrogen from fertiliser and animal waste pours into streams and rivers from the scores of intensive pig, cattle and maize farms created in the Breton heartland since the 1970s. They have propagated an explosion of giant sea lettuces in the estuaries of the northern coast. Attempts by campaigners like Mr Le Lay and intermittent efforts by successive governments to reduce the problem have been defeated by the powerful Breton agri-industrial lobby and the cowardice of Breton politicians. The farmers blamed global warming or phosphate pollution. The bodies of poisoned wild animals have been dumped on the doorsteps of anti-weed campaigners. Advertisement Finally, in 2021, a report by the powerful, public spending watchdog, the Cour des Comptes, concluded that the proliferation of toxic seaweed was 90 percent caused by intensive agriculture. Nothing much was done. Now the ruling by the Nantes court presents the government with a serious problem. The state has been ordered to pay the jogger's family over €300,000 in damages. Other compensation claims will follow. The timing is awkward. A joint committee of the Senate and the National Assembly this week approved a version of the 'Loi Duplomb', an attempt by a Centre-right senator, farmer and farm-lobby spokesman, Laurent Duplomb, to roll back some of the modest, environmental protections imposed on agriculture in recent years. READ ALSO : What is France's Loi Duplomb and why are farmers protesting about it?✎ Duplomb did not get things all his own way but the committee - to be followed almost certainly by the Assembly and the government - lifted a ban on an especially nasty pesticide. Advertisement Acétamipride is needed to protect the crops of large-scale beetroot farmers; unfortunately, it also kills the bees of small honey-producers. So much for France as the guardian of small, quality farming, So what will the government do - what CAN the government do - to stop the invasion of the giant, poisonous sea lettuces? Yves-Marie Le Lay, whom I met on the Plage de Saint-Maurice in 2011, is still, I'm delighted to find, campaigning, aged 75. 'There has to be a complete rethink of Brittany's model of intensive agriculture,' he said. 'So long as that is not changed, the problem will never go away.' Breton pork farmers are among the most pig-headed and belligerent of all French farmers. Who, in the present, anti-ecological mood of Far Right, Right and Centre in French politics, is brave enough to tell them that they have to keep fewer pigs or stop dumping their slurry into streams? The calamity of the north Breton beaches is now a half-century old and counting. Nothing will change soon.
Local France
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Local France
PODCAST: From strikes to extreme heat - what to expect in France this summer
Host Ben McPartland is joined by The Local France's Emma Pearson and John Lichfield for a special edition looking ahead to this summer in France. You can find the Talking France podcast on Spotify or Apple, download it here or listen on the link below Summer in France often brings strikes, and this year unions representing air traffic controllers, rail workers, Paris museum staff and the operators of the highway péages have all filed strike notices in a variety of disputes over pay and working conditions. Advertisement The usual political break might not happen this year, however, with the prime minister trying to sell his Budget ideas and the possibility of French elections - will PM François Bayrou make it through the summer? And what will await him when parliament restarts in September? It's already pretty hot in France, so we're looking at how hot it's likely to get this summer plus some tips for staying cool via the French government and why French doctors don't like ice-cold air conditioning. Finally we have a few tips for some events to enjoy this summer. The podcast will now be taking a break over the summer but, much like the prime minister, we hope to return in September. Talking France is a free podcast made possible by the support of members of The Local, you can find out more about becoming a member here . Extra reading: Planes, trains and museums: The strikes to expect in France this summer How hot will it get in France this summer OPINION: Another week, another attempt to bring down the French government
Local France
28-06-2025
- Sport
- Local France
Inside France: The huge Seine clean-up, upsetting the British and gassing about Chat GPT
Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article. Not so in-Seine One hundred and two years ago, the city of Paris banned swimming in the Seine because of the dangerously high levels of pollution in the river. Since then various city officials (including Jacques Chirac during his time as mayor) have tried to bring it back but none succeeded - until now. Three swimming spots will open up in the Seine on Saturday, July 5th, offering locals and tourists alike the chance to take a dip - with the proviso that they will only open if water quality levels are safe. It's likely that the pools may close for a day or so if there are more storms or flash floods in the city. READ ALSO : Where in Paris you can swim the Seine this summer This is the culmination of a massive clean-up effort - and it's important to note that Paris didn't spend €1.5 billion to let people swim. It spent €1.5 billion to make the river clean enough that people could swim. This is an enormous legacy project that will hopefully benefit many generations to come, as well as bringing back to life the river's biodiversity. There have been many people who were apparently keen to see them fail - both during the Olympic challenges that were the first stage of the swimming project and now. 2024 headline from The European Conservative Headline from The Times on the day the Olympic triathlon swimming event was held in the Seine I think that the city deserves immense credit for ignoring the haters and pushing ahead with a project that has been, yes, expensive, complicated and sometimes disappointing but will ultimately benefit billions. I look forward to swimming in it this summer - not just to enjoy a cool dip on a hot day but because this seems to me to be a symbol of 21st century Paris; ambitious, bold, forward-looking, environmentally conscious and working to improve the quality of life for its inhabitants. Advertisement Talking France We discuss swimming in the Seine in this week's Talking France podcast, as well as the landmark legal verdict over Brittany's toxic green algae and how France has, so far, managed to avoid anti-tourism protests of the type seen in Spain, Italy and Portugal. Listen here or on the link below. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of podcasting I see that the French have been stirring up trouble in the UK again, indirectly anyway. Paris-based journalist Sophie Pedder's question to the British ex-MP and podcast host Rory Stewart was a simple one 'What is it that bugs you so much about the French? Why can you never be positive about any French politician?', but it sparked quite a row between Stewart and his podcast co-host Alistair Campbell. My take is that Sophie is quite right, there is among certain Brits (especially posh older men) a lazy and frankly tedious strain of 'hating the French', based on very little actual knowledge of the country next door. There's plenty to dislike and criticise about French politicians, but doing so simply because they are French is just dull. What prompted all this, incidentally, was ex prime minister Gabriel Attal's trip to London - following in the footsteps of his mentor Emmanuel Macron who made a big effort to court London's French community back when he was launching his presidential ambitions in 2016/7. Advertisement French language observation of the week I will never again be able to hear about Chat GPT without thinking of this In French chat gpt sounds like "chatte j'ai pété" which means "pussy I farted". Every time a French person talks about chat gpt it sounds like they are saying "pussy I farted" We don't talk about this enough — Emily Herring ( @ ) 26 June 2025 at 09:40 Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.
