French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Avignon:

Gisele Pelicot’s ex-husband was jailed on Thursday for 20 years over her drugging and mass rape by strangers recruited online, in a case that shocked France and resonated around the world.

After the trial was closed, Gisele Pelicot emerged to give a full statement to reporters, speaking about the trial itself, the verdict and her hopes for the future.

After over three months of hearings regarded as historic, here is Gisele Pelicot’s statement in full. 

“It is with great emotion that I am speaking with you today. This trial has been a very difficult ordeal. And at this moment, I am thinking first and foremost of my three children: David, Caroline, and Florian.

I am also thinking of my grandchildren because they are the future. I also led this fight for them, as well as for my daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine.

I am also thinking of all the other families affected by this tragedy. And finally, I am thinking of the unrecognised victims, whose stories often remain in the shadows. I want you to know that we share the same fight.

I would like to express my profound gratitude towards everyone who has supported me throughout this ordeal. Your messages have deeply moved me and have given me the strength to come back every day to face these long, daily hearings.

I would also like to thank the Association d’aide aux victimes (the Victim’s Aid Association), whose unwavering support has been invaluable.

To all the journalists who have followed this case from the beginning, I would like to express my gratitude for the credible, respectful, and dignified way in which they have reported on these hearings on a daily basis. 

Finally, to my lawyers, they know the gratitude and high regard I have for them, having accompanied me through every step of this painful process.

When I opened the doors to this trial that began on September 2, I wanted all of society to be a witness to the debates that took place here. I have never regretted that decision.

I now have confidence in our capacity to find a better future where everyone — women and men alike — can live in harmony with respect and mutual understanding.”

A reporter then asked Gisele Pelicot about the court’s decision.

“I respect the court and its decision of the verdict,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

President Emmanuel Macron named a new government led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier Saturday, his office said, marked by a shift to the right 11 weeks after an inconclusive parliamentary election.

The first major task for Barnier, appointed just over two weeks ago, will be to submit a 2025 budget plan addressing France’s financial situation, which the prime minister this week called “very serious”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A coalition on the left that came together unexpectedly ahead of France’s snap elections won the most parliamentary seats in the vote, according to polling projections. The surprise projections put President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance in second and the far right in third.
| Photo Credit: AP

French parties sought to project strength and gather allies on July 9, with the government adrift following an election in which no one political force claimed a clear majority.

Having defied expectations to top the polls, new MPs from the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance began showing up to visit their new workplaces in parliament ahead of a first session on July 18.

But the coalition of Greens, Socialists, Communists and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) is still debating over who to put forward as a potential Prime Minister and whether it could be open to working in a broader coalition.

Combined, the left-leaning parties hold 193 of 577 seats in the National Assembly and are well short of the 289-seat threshold for a majority.

Nevertheless, members plan to name a potential Prime Minister “by the end of the week,” leading LFI figure Mathilde Panot said.

In the French system, the President nominates the Prime Minister, who must be able to survive a confidence vote in parliament — a tricky proposition with three closely-balanced political forces in play.

Also Read | France President Emmanuel Macron bid to reshape political landscape leaves no clear path to form new government

Any left-leaning government would need “broader support in the National Assembly,” influential Socialist MP Boris Vallaud acknowledged in an interview with broadcaster France Inter.

Mr. Macron’s camp came second in Sunday’s vote, taking 164 seats after voters came together to block the far-right National Rally (RN) from power.

This left the anti-immigration, anti-Brussels outfit in third place with 143 MPs.

The President has kept Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s government in place for now, hoping horse-trading in the coming days and weeks could leave an opening for him to reclaim the initiative.

However, “there has been an institutional shift. Everyone thinks it’s up to the newly-elected National Assembly to bring forth a solution, which (Mr. Macron) would simply have to accept,” wrote commentator Guillaume Tabard in conservative daily Le Figaro.

‘None can govern alone’

In a sign that some divisions remain, the left parties’ MPs planned to enter the parliament at different times throughout the day.

The Socialists are still hoping to glean a few more members for their group to outweigh LFI and have a greater say over the alliance’s direction.

Meanwhile, members of Mr. Macron’s camp were eyeing both the centre-left Socialists and conservative Republicans as possible allies of convenience for a new centrist-dominated coalition.

“None of the three leading blocs can govern alone,” Stephane Sejourne, head of Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party, wrote in daily Le Monde.

“The centrist bloc is ready to talk to all the members of the republican spectrum,” he added — while naming red lines including that coalition members must support the EU and Ukraine and maintain business-friendly policies.

These requirements, he warned, “necessarily exclude LFI” and its caustic founder Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Markets are paying close attention to the EU’s second-largest economy.

Ratings agency Moody’s warned it could downgrade its credit score for France’s more than three-trillion-euro debt pile if a future government reverses Mr. Macron’s widely-loathed 2023 pension reform, echoing a Monday warning from S&P on the deficit.

What next?

Even as politicians struggle to define the immediate path ahead, eyes are also already turning to the next time French voters will be called to the polls.

Macron’s term expires in 2027 and he cannot run a third time — potentially leaving the way open for his twice-defeated opponent, RN figurehead Marine Le Pen, to finally capture the presidency.

The far-right outfit has been digesting a disappointing result after polls suggested it could take an absolute majority in parliament.

On Tuesday, party sources told AFP its director-general Gilles Penelle had resigned.

Penelle, elected last month to the European Parliament, was the architect of a “push-button” plan supposed to prepare the RN for snap elections, which ultimately failed to produce a full roster of credible candidates.

The far right outfit’s progress is undeniable, having advanced from just eight MPs soon after Mr. Macron’s first presidential win in 2017 to 143 today.

OPINION | ​Resurgent left: On the French elections, European politics

Greens and LFI leaders nevertheless called Tuesday for the RN to be shut out of key parliamentary posts.

“Every time we give them jobs, we increase their competence. It’s important not to give them jobs with responsibilities,” leading LFI lawmaker Mathilde Panot said.

“Today we represent 10 million French people with 143 MPs,” retorted RN representative Thomas Menage, calling the appeal “anti-democratic”.

As for Mr. Macron, he has sought to stay above the fray, planning for a trip to Washington for a NATO summit starting on Wednesday where allies may be in need of reassurance of France’s stability.

Image for representation only
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

One person was killed and six injured overnight in a gritty northern Paris suburb in a shooting likely linked to drug trafficking, prosecutors and the mayor said Saturday.

The attack in a parking lot near a cultural centre at Sevran, which lies between central Paris and the city’s main airport Charles de Gaulle, took place around 11:45 pm (2145 GMT) Friday, prosecutors said.

Upon arriving on the scene, police found four injured people strewn on the ground. One died soon after and the three others were taken to hospitals in a serious condition, a police source said.

Three more people injured by bullets were later taken to hospital, the source said, adding that two men had arrived in the parking lot in a car and one of them got out and opened fire. The attackers then fled.

Sevran mayor Stephane Blanchet told AFP “it was clearly a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking.”

“There is a need to establish order and eradicate trafficking,” he said. “Those idiots fired live bullets and did not heed appeals for calm”.

Police have opened an investigation into intentional homicide by an organised gang, they said. No arrests had been by Saturday morning.

European countries’ flags fly at the European Parliament on April 23, 2024, in Strasbourg. The European election will take place on June 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

France has urged social media platforms to increase monitoring of disinformation online in the run-up to the European Parliament elections, a Minister said on April 24.

Jean-Noel Barrot, Minister for Europe at the Foreign Ministry, said two elements could possibly upset the poll on June 9: a high rate of abstentions and foreign interference.

His warning comes as French officials have repeatedly cautioned over the risk of disinformation — especially from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine — interfering with the polls.

To fight absenteeism, France is launching a vast media campaign to encourage its citizens to get out and vote.

As for disinformation, a new government agency mandated to detect disinformation called VIGINUM is on high alert, Mr. Barrot said.

Also Read | Meloni, Le Pen rift disrupts far-Right’s prospects of wielding power in the EU

The junior Minister said he had urged the European Commission to help ensure social media platforms “require the greatest vigilance during the campaign period, the electoral silence period and on the day of the vote”.

He added he would be summoning representatives of top platforms in the coming days “so that they can present their action plan in France… to monitor and regulate” content.

VIGINUM head Marc-Antoine Brillant said disinformation had become common during elections.

“Since the mid-2010s, not a single major poll in a liberal democracy has been spared” attempts to manipulate results, he said.

“The year 2024 is a very particular one… with two major conflicts ongoing in Ukraine and Gaza which, by their nature, generate a huge amount of discussion and noise on social media” and with France hosting the Olympics from July, he said.

All this makes the European elections “particularly attractive for foreign actors and the manipulation of information,” he said.

Mr. Barrot mentioned the example of Slovakia, where September parliamentary elections were “gravely disturbed during the electoral silence period by the dissemination of a fake audio recording” targeting a pro-EU candidate.

A populist party that was critical of the European Union and NATO won and has since stopped military aid to Ukraine to fight off Russian forces.

Paris:

The trial opens in France on Monday of a guitar teacher accused of flying in a gang of Georgian hitmen to murder his physiotherapist. The musician has accused the Parisian practitioner of causing him debilitating pain in the neck but has denied ever trying to kill him.

The physiotherapist was crossing the road to go to work in 2019, when a car accelerated and knocked him over before speeding off.

He survived with a bruise on his foot and trauma to his leg and told investigators he suspected the involvement of a former patient who held a grudge against him.

The order of physiotherapists had ordered him to pay his ex-client 30,000 euros (almost $32,000) in damages.

But through telephone tapping investigators discovered the client was allegedly still bent on revenge.

They found that the man’s partner and her father, both Georgian, had allegedly helped recruit hitmen from the Caucasus country to take out the physiotherapist.

In 2018, the music teacher paid a first gang 2,000 euros ($2,130) but it never completed its mission.

His girlfriend then is alleged to have found a new team, including three men who flew over from Georgia to try to run over their target, then left the country.

The guitar teacher was allegedly planning to burglarise the therapist’s home when police arrested him.

French authorities ordered 10 people to stand trial in the case, but three are in Georgia and one died in detention in February.

The guitar teacher, as well as four other men and a woman, are to appear in court in the case to run until May 10.

Most of them have been charged with plotting to carry out a murder in a gang, while one of them — a friend — has been accused of not reporting a crime.

Contacted by AFP, the guitar teacher’s defence team refused to comment.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

France’s President Emmanuel Macron said a Bill on assisted dying would go before parliament in May, speaking in an interview published by French media on March 10, 2024. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron will present a Bill on assisted dying to go before parliament in May, he said in an interview published by French media on March 10.

The move could make France the next European country to legalise euthanasia for the terminally ill, following a long consultation with a committee of French citizens on “active assistance to dying”.

Only adults with full control of their judgement, suffering an incurable and life-threatening illness in the short to medium term and whose pain cannot be relieved will be able to “ask to be helped to die”, Mr. Macron told the La Croix and Liberation newspapers.

The change is necessary “because there are situations you cannot humanely accept”, Mr. Macron said. The goal was “to reconcile an individual’s autonomy with the nation’s solidarity.

“With this Bill, we are facing up to death,” he said.

But the highly controversial move is likely to provoke stiff opposition, and even though the Bill would be presented before the European Parliament elections in June, its passage is unlikely before 2025.

While opinion polls suggest a majority of French favour right-to-die legislation, religious leaders in the traditionally Catholic country as well as many health workers oppose it.

Mr. Macron acknowledged the debate by announcing the Bill simultaneously to La Croix, a Catholic daily, and the left-leaning Liberation, which has championed the euthanasia cause.

The move comes days after Mr. Macron spearheaded an effort that saw the right to abortion enshrined in France’s Constitution earlier this month, the first country in the world to do so.

‘Precise criteria’

The president said minors and patients suffering psychiatric or neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s would not be eligible.

If medical professionals gave their consent, a lethal substance would be prescribed for the patient, who could administer it themselves or with the help of a third party if they could not physically do so.

The third party can be a volunteer, the doctor or the nurse treating the patient, according to the text, while the substance can be administered at the patient’s home, in care homes for the elderly or care centres.

Medical experts would have 15 days to respond to a request for help to die and an approval would be valid for three months, during which time the patient could retract, Mr. Macron said.

Mr. Macron said that if medical professionals rejected the request, the patient could consult another medical team or appeal.

He added that he wanted to avoid the terms assisted suicide or euthanasia because the patient’s consent is essential, with a role for medical opinion and “precise criteria”.

Until now French patients in pain wishing to end their lives have had to travel abroad, including to neighbouring Belgium.

A 2005 law has legalised passive euthanasia, such as withholding artificial life support, as a “right to die”.

A 2016 law allows doctors to couple this with “deep and continuous sedation” for terminally ill patients in pain.

But active euthanasia, whereby doctors administer lethal doses of drugs to patients suffering from an incurable condition, is illegal.

Assisted suicide — whereby patients can receive help to voluntarily take their own life — is also banned.