French PM and mayor of Paris attend events held at Bataclan and other sites targeted by gunmen and suicide bombers
On Friday, Castex and Hidalgo laid wreaths at the seven sites where the terrorists struck. The ceremonies were brief and relatively discreet. This year the public had been advised to remain at home under the Covid-19 lockdown rules, but several people turned out anyway to place flowers and cards in memory of the victims.
Friday’s commemorations came as France remained on high alert after three recent attacks by Islamist extremists, including the beheading of high-school teacher Samuel Paty and the killing of three people in a church in Nice.
In 2015, the first attack happened at 9.15pm on Friday 13 November outside the Stade de France during an international football match. Shortly afterwards, another group of heavily armed terrorists drove around the capital’s trendy districts north of the Seine shooting at crowded bars, cafés and restaurants.
Another group stormed the Bataclan during a concert attended by 1,500 people, taking members of the audience hostage and killing 90 people.
Ten months earlier, in January 2015, terrorists had killed 12 people in an attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo after it published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad considered offensive to Muslims. In the following two days, five more people were killed by a terrorist gunman, including four people at a Jewish supermarket.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has recently come under fierce criticism for proposing a new law on “Islamist separatism”. The Élysée says the legislation –to be presented to the Assemblée Nationale at the beginning of next month – is aimed at strengthening the country’s secular traditions and preventing the radicalisation of future terrorists. Critics have accused the president and government of targeting the wider Muslim community.
After Paty’s killing, police raided the homes of individuals and offices of a number of Muslim organisations that had no link to the murder in order to “send a message”, according to interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, who also announced the Collective Against Islamophobia in France was being disbanded.
As protests against Macron erupted in many Islamic countries, including Bangladesh and Iran, along with threats to boycott French goods, Darmanin provoked further outrage by questioning why supermarkets had specific halal and kosher food sections.
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On Friday, Franck Riester, a delegate minister in charge of foreign trade and economic attractiveness, told foreign journalists this comment was Darmanin’s “personal” view. He insisted the government was not targeting French Muslims and hit back at criticism of its response to the terrorist attacks.
“France is under attack and as we have seen so is Austria and some Islamic countries, so this is a common fight against terrorism,” Riester said.
“We will continue to defend its citizens and those on its soil and defend our values and will not be influenced or pressured by anyone. I absolutely don’t accept the position of those who say this (terrorism) is France’s fault or the fruit of its politics and choices. That’s the world turned upside down.”
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The number of confirmed new Covid-19 cases and deaths in France rose sharply in the last 24 hours, according to French health ministry data published Saturday as a number of European countries announced new restrictions to stem a deadly second wave.
France registered 32,095 new Covid-19 cases over the previous 24 hours to reach a total of 1,954,599. Deaths in hospitals in France from Covid-19 rose by 359 over the previous 24 hours to reach a total of 44,246 so far, according to French health ministry figures.
The rise in infections and deaths in France came as a swathe of new restrictions were announced or came into force in a number of European countries.
Schools to close in Austria and Greece
Austria on Saturday announced schools and non-essential shops would close from Tuesday, just two weeks after a partial lockdown was imposed.
"There are still many who say that infections don't happen at school, in shops or services," Chancellor Sebastien Kurtz told a news conference.
"But the truth is the authorities can no longer trace 77 percent of new infections, which means they no longer know where contamination is happening."
Greece, battling a saturated national health system, announced it would shut all schools after imposing a nationwide night curfew from Friday.
"Closing elementary schools was the last thing we wanted to do. This is a measure of how serious the situation is," Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias said. Secondary schools had already been shuttered.
In Italy, the regions of Tuscany and Campania – of which Florence and Naples are the respective capitals – plunged into "red zones" of tough restrictions, which now cover 26 million of the 60 million population.
"There is no other way if we want to reduce the numbers of dead," Health Minister Roberto Speranza said, as the country's death toll rose by 544 to 44,683, one of Europe's worst.
New anti-virus curbs also came into force in Ukraine on Saturday, with all non-essential businesses ordered closed for the weekend.
'Don't kill the economy'
There were protests in several Germans cities against enforced mask-wearing, with police saying they used water cannon to disperse nearly 1,000 people in Frankfurt.
France's Riviera resort of Nice saw 1,500 take to the streets to demand a more coherent set of restrictions to fight the disease.
French restaurant and bar owners announced legal action against government measures which closed them from the end of October.
Hundreds of demonstrators also turned out in Portugal, defying a weekend curfew imposed on seven out of every 10 of the population of 10 million.
The curfew bans driving on public roads after 1 pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
"The pandemic is on and we have to be protected, but without killing the economy," said 33-year-old Carla Torres, who works in Lisbon's hospitality industry.
Poland became the latest country to report record figures with 548 coronavirus deaths over 24 hours, just days after the government decided against introducing a nationwide quarantine.
EU body expects favourable opinion on vaccines
Lifting the gloom, the European Medicines Agency added to growing hopes that an effective vaccine could be available soon.
The EU body said it expected to give a favourable opinion on a vaccine by the end of the year if test results proved positive. That would allow distribution from January.
But if the hurdles of testing and distribution are overcome, another challenge awaits: Will people take a vaccine?
"My fear is that not enough French people will get vaccinated," French Prime Minister Jean Castex told Le Monde newspaper.
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(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)
Greece, battling a saturated national health system, announced it would shut all schools after imposing a nationwide night curfew from Friday.
"Closing elementary schools was the last thing we wanted to do. This is a measure of how serious the situation is," Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias said. Secondary schools had already been shuttered.
Après les rudes leçons tirées de la pandémie, l’Union européenne tente décidément de se mobiliser sur les questions de santé. Son plan d’action 2021-2027 (EU4Health) a franchi une nouvelle étape, vendredi 13 novembre, avec le vote, par les eurodéputés, de leur rapport approuvant ce projet, mais l’assortissant de conditions – financières notamment.
L’organisme table sur “6 ou 7” vaccins différents disponibles en 2021, selon son directeur.
« Aux Etats de prouver maintenant que les grands discours tenus durant cette crise sanitaire seront bien suivis d’effets. À eux de s’investir et de prouver qu’ils souhaitent également un programme faisant de l’Union un espace où la santé des citoyens est la priorité », souligne Nathalie Colin-Oesterlé, députée française du Parti populaire européen, et autrice d’un récent rapport visant à éviter des pénuries de médicaments et d’équipements. Pour soutenir son projet, la Commission avait initialement déterminé un montant de 9,4 milliards d’euros (comptant pour une part du Cadre financier pluriannuel (CFP), le futur budget de l’Union). Les longues discussions du mois de juillet, animées notamment par les réticences des pays « frugaux » à dépenser davantage, avaient abouti à ramener ce montant à 1,6 milliard.
« Pharmacie européenne »
Présenté par ses auteurs comme « ambitieux et à long terme », le texte du Parlement inclut une série de nouvelles propositions visant à mieux affronter de futures menaces sanitaires, à réduire la dépendance pharmaceutique des pays de l’Union, et à instaurer une meilleure collaboration entre eux. Avec l’espoir que les Etats membres, moteurs du trilogue Conseil-Parlement-Commission, embraieront.
Article réservé à nos abonnés Lire aussi La Commission européenne veut muscler la gestion des crises sanitaires
« Aux Etats de prouver maintenant que les grands discours tenus durant cette crise sanitaire seront bien suivis d’effets. À eux de s’investir et de prouver qu’ils souhaitent également un programme faisant de l’Union un espace où la santé des citoyens est la priorité », souligne Nathalie Colin-Oesterlé, députée française du Parti populaire européen, et autrice d’un récent rapport visant à éviter des pénuries de médicaments et d’équipements. Pour soutenir son projet, la Commission avait initialement déterminé un montant de 9,4 milliards d’euros (comptant pour une part du Cadre financier pluriannuel (CFP), le futur budget de l’Union). Les longues discussions du mois de juillet, animées notamment par les réticences des pays « frugaux » à dépenser davantage, avaient abouti à ramener ce montant à 1,6 milliard.
« Pharmacie européenne »
La deuxième vague de l’épidémie amènera-t-elle certaines capitales à considérer que cette enveloppe est insuffisante ? Le Parlement européen aurait aimé, lui, en revenir à la proposition de départ de 9,4 milliards, mais les discussions qu’il a par ailleurs menées sur le CFP l’ont amené à accepter un compromis, jugé raisonnable, à 5,1 milliards. Ce serait en tout cas dix fois plus que le montant de 449 millions qui avait été fixé pour la période 2014-2020. La Commission de l’environnement, de la santé publique et de la sécurité alimentaire (ENVI) de l’assemblée de Strasbourg avait voté une série d’amendements au texte initial et déterminé une série d’exigences qui presque toutes se retrouvent dans le rapport final.
Après les rudes leçons tirées de la pandémie, l’Union européenne tente décidément de se mobiliser sur les questions de santé. Son plan d’action 2021-2027 (EU4Health) a franchi une nouvelle étape, vendredi 13 novembre, avec le vote, par les eurodéputés, de leur rapport approuvant ce projet, mais l’assortissant de conditions – financières notamment.
Présenté par ses auteurs comme « ambitieux et à long terme », le texte du Parlement inclut une série de nouvelles propositions visant à mieux affronter de futures menaces sanitaires, à réduire la dépendance pharmaceutique des pays de l’Union, et à instaurer une meilleure collaboration entre eux. Avec l’espoir que les Etats membres, moteurs du trilogue Conseil-Parlement-Commission, embraieront.
Article réservé à nos abonnés Lire aussi La Commission européenne veut muscler la gestion des crises sanitaires
US President Donald Trump has for the first time in public appeared to concede the US election, saying that president-elect Joe Biden “won”.
He said this in a tweet alongside making baseless claims that the vote was rigged against him.
The president, who has spent months trying to undermine the election results with unproven allegations of fraud, had pledged to go forward with a legal strategy that he hopes will overturn state results that gave Biden the win.
The Trump administration’s decision not to recognize Biden as the winner has prevented Biden and his team from gaining access to government office space and to funding normally afforded to an incoming administration to ensure a smooth transition. The federal agency in charge of providing those resources, the General Services Administration, has yet to recognize Biden’s victory.
In a speech in Delaware, Biden said his team was going full steam ahead with forming a new administration to take over on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2021, come what may.
“We’re going to be going, moving along, in a consistent manner, putting together our administration, the White House, and reviewing who we’re going to pick for the Cabinet positions, and nothing’s going to stop that,” he said on Tuesday. The President-elect said it was an “embarrassment” that Trump has not conceded the election.
The French President is fighting on multiple fronts to prove he is fit to lead the country for a second five-year term ahead of the 2022 national election. Terror attacks, a global pandemic and the bitter wrangling over future access to Britain’s fishing grounds have all blighted his presidency in recent weeks. According to the Europe Elects website, Mr Macron’s Le Republique En Marche party is slipping in the opinion polls.
But he faces a losing battle with Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit chief, seemingly ready to offer concessions to the UK in a bid to get an agreement across the line.
French fishermen – many of whom are supporters of Ms Le Pen – have been disheartened to find out they will in fact face losing access to the UK’s coastal waters after Brexit.
The President’s liberal movement suffered a five percent slump in support this summer, as shown by two separate surveys in July and September.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the eurosceptic Rassemblement National, has managed to clinch a lead in the polls even after seeing support for her own right-wing party also slip.
Between 100 and 200 French jihadists are still believed to be in former IS group strongholds in northern Iraq and Syria, and it would be an "illusion" to think they were not capable of clandestinely coming back to France, added the official.
Macron has never met Biden, who served as vice president under Barack Obama from 2008-2016 before Macron arrived at the Elysee in 2017.
In contrast to some other EU leaders, Macron sought from the outset to build a strong relationship with Trump, hosting him for a high profile visit to Paris in 2017 and then again for the 2019 G7 summit in Biarritz.
French geopolitics specialist François Heisbourg is senior advisor for Europe at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies and special advisor at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. He spoke with FRANCE 24 on Monday about what foreign counterparts can expect of the erratic outgoing commander-in-chief and of a successor very familiar to some.
In London and Paris, President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Boris Johnson attended Armistice Day ceremonies to mark 100 years since the memorial interment of two unknown warriors -- one from each country -- in honour of the fallen.
"November 11, 1918. At 11.00 am, throughout France, bells and bugles sounded the ceasefire. Millions of soldiers died for France. For our freedom. For our values. Let us never forget," Macron tweeted after a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe.
It is also 100 years since the remains of two nameless soldiers -- one French and one British -- were taken from the Western Front to be honoured in memorial graves at the Arc de Triomphe and in London's Westminster Abbey.
Britain's Prince Charles laid a wreath at the abbey, while England rugby players training in London and soldiers deployed to a coronavirus rapid-testing facility in Liverpool took time out to observe two minutes' silence for the fallen war heroes.
Commemorations were also held in Kosovo, Belgrade, Edinburgh and Brussels.
As Europe paid its respects, a bomb struck a World War I commemoration attended by Western diplomats in the Saudi city of Jeddah, leaving at least two people wounded.
The attack came amid widespread Muslim anger at Macron's vow to tackle radical Islam in the aftermath of a string of terror attacks which have claimed 250 lives on French soil since 2015.
Last month, a Saudi citizen with a knife wounded a guard at the French consulate in Jeddah on the same day a knife-wielding man killed three people in a church in Nice in southern France.
Pantheon honour -
Macron did not address the Paris memorial, which was sparsely attended and socially-distanced amid a second nationwide lockdown to curtail the coronavirus outbreak.
After laying a wreath, he greeted military officials one by one, thanking them for their service.
Later Wednesday, Macron was to preside over a ceremony to reinter the remains of World War I writer Maurice Genevoix at the Pantheon of national heroes in Paris.
Macron has championed the honour to encourage remembrance of the conflict.
Such a response should focus on "the development of common databases, the exchange of information or the strengthening of criminal policies," he said after hosting a video conference with fellow EU leaders.
The online summit came a week after a convicted Islamic State group supporter killed four people in a shooting rampage in the heart of Vienna, following hot on the heels of last month's attack on a church in the French city of Nice and the beheading of a teacher in a Paris suburb two weeks before that.
Macron called the summit after the Austrian attack to seek an EU-wide response to Islamist attacks.
It was attended by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, European Council chief Charles Michel and EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen.
French officials will later move the remains of wartime writer Maurice Genevoix into the country's Panthéon of national heroes, an honour championed by Macron to encourage remembrance of the conflict.
Genevoix wrote five memoirs of his time as a frontline soldier experiencing the horrors of trench warfare in the conflict, which he later collected into a single book "Ceux de 14" ("Men of 14").
The work is considered by many to be the single greatest literary work to have emerged in French from the 1914-18 war, with its raw insight into the experience of battle drawing comparisons with "Storm of Steel" by German writer Ernst Junger or the English poetry of Wilfred Owen.
Marking 102 years since the end of World War I, an installation by French composer Pascal Dusapin and German artist Anselm Kiefer, commissioned by the French presidency, will also be put in the Panthéon.
A host of other events are planned across France to mark Armistice Day.
Officials in the Limousin region will commemorate the deeds of a six-year-old boy who is hailed as the youngest French World War II hero for carrying messages under his shirt to leaders of the resistance against Nazi occupation.
The name of Marcel Pinte — known as Quinquin — will be inscribed on Wednesday into the war memorial in Aixe-sur-Vienne just west of the city of Limoges.
The statement added that Macron's policies were aimed at "fighting against radical Islamism, and to do so with the Muslims of France, who are an integral part of French society, history and the Republic."
"We will not give in, ever," Macron tweeted on Sunday. "We respect all differences in a spirit of peace. We do not accept hate speech and defend reasonable debate. We will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values."
Paty's death has sparked a security crackdown in France, where officials are targeting hate speech on social media and organizations and non-profits with possible links to Islamism.
The Mohammed caricatures that Paty used in his class originally appeared in Charlie Hebdo, and were cited as the motivation for a terror attack on the satirical magazine in 2015 that left 12 people dead. Macron fiercely defended the right to display such cartoons in France at the memorial event for Paty..
French Prime Minister Jean Castex has said his government would keep “fighting relentlessly” against “radical Islam” as he paid tribute to the three victims of a knife attack in the southern city of Nice last month.
“We know the enemy. Not only has it been identified, but it has a name, it is radical Islam, a political ideology that disfigures the Muslim religion,” Castex said in a speech during a ceremony for the victims on Saturday.
“(It is) an enemy that the government is fighting relentlessly by providing the necessary resources and mobilising all of its forces every day,” he added.
Concerns over security and immigration have increased in France after the knife attack at a church in Nice on October 29 saw three people killed.
The man suspected of carrying out the Nice attack – still in a critical condition after being shot by police – was a 21-year-old Tunisian born who had arrived in Europe on September 20, landing in Lampedusa, the Italian island off Tunisia. He has been identified as Brahim Issaoui.
The attack came after the beheading of Samuel Paty, a school teacher in a Paris suburb who showed his pupils caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a discussion on free speech.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s subsequent defence of the right to draw the prophet drew the ire of Muslim communities across the world, with trade associations in several Muslim countries announcing a boycott of French products.
Joe Biden, the US president-elect, has cast himself as a moderate with the experience and empathy required to offset Donald Trump’s disruptive presidency. Having battled adversity throughout a career scarred by personal tragedy, he says he feels the pain of a nation unnerved by economic crisis, civil unrest and a deadly pandemic.
Slovak officials said the team included two Downing Street advisers and two people responsible for arranging the UK’s large-scale testing programme in Liverpool.
“They are interested in our lessons and in the details and results,” said Slovakia’s deputy defence minister, Marian Majer, who added that Slovakia has offered to send a planning team to London to help with UK preparations if required.
