Viewed from Paris, Starmer (and Powell) have been remarkably solid bilateral partners for Macron, with 🇬🇧 and 🇫🇷 co-leading on Ukraine and Hormuz, and forging unprecedented cooperation on nuclear deterrence. Along with the E3 format with Germany, they have given Europe leadership

“Step by step Emmanuel Macron has been executing what looks like a plan to protect France’s institutions in case the populist right wins next year’s presidential election” economist.com/europe/2026/...

“Each step was a risk, each door a threat, each second a decision. And yet they advanced, under terrorist fire” Moving tribute today at the Elysée to 55 police officers who intervened during the 2015 Bataclan terrorist attack. Elegant from Macron to include Hollande, Valls and those then in charge

In 12 months’ time French voters will elect a successor to Emmanuel Macron. Polls consistently show the RN ahead in first-round voting. But a poll lead a year before the vote does not always lead to victory. Why the 🇫🇷 election may be more open than it appears economist.com/europe/2026/...

Why France is now Europe’s most targeted country (after Ukraine) by foreign disinformation campaigns. And how the country has become “best in class” for detecting and exposing fake news economist.com/europe/2026/...

Our cover this week

France’s presidential election is starting to open up E. Philippe would qualify decisively for the second round, even with centre-right rivals. The run-off would be close, but not unwinnable, against Bardella or Le Pen Source: Elabe 25-27 March 2026

France offers some hope for defeating populists economist.com/europe/2026/... from @economist.com

These were mayoral 🇫🇷 elections, so any national extrapolation is of course hazardous. But if you go by voting in towns with > 100,000 population, one cautious conclusion from last night’s voting is this : the broad non-populist centre can hold

It’s been quite a week for the projection of 🇫🇷 power and demonstration of the value of alliances -Macron’s new deterrence doctrine for Europe -🇫🇷 to increase its nuclear stockpile -CDG leads European carrier strike group to eastern Med -defensive aid to regional allies incl Cyprus, Lebanon + UAE

Our cover this week. Says it all

France’s new doctrine on nuclear deterrence will reinforce Europe’s collective security in ways that only recently would have seemed unrealistic and unnecessary A report from île Longue economist.com/europe/2026/...

Brilliant column this week from @sophiepedder.bsky.social on why France has such trouble convincing the rest of Europe, even when it is right economist.com/europe/2026/... from The Economist

“If Donald Trump’s capriciousness inspires deep anxiety among Europeans, they are also troubled by another uncomfortable idea: a scratchy sense that perhaps France was right after all” Europeans confront the unthinkable 😉 economist.com/europe/2026/...

Europe faces a “geopolitical and geo-economic state of emergency” Macron told us, and will be “swept aside” if it does not reform. After its “Greenland moment”, Europe can’t go on as before. The US is “openly hostile” to Europe and wants it “dismembered” economist.com/europe/2026/...

Can Europe do nuclear deterrence without America? France and the UK are deepening their cooperation. Other European conversations with the continent’s two nuclear-armed powers are also underway A joint report with @shashj.bsky.social economist.com/europe/2026/...

Paris is not just about the past The stunning new Metro station at Villejuif-Gustave Roussy, which opened in 2025, is part of the biggest expansion of the city’s network for half a century economist.com/europe/2026/...

🕶️🇫🇷🔥

Trump’s imperialist threats to Danish sovereignty over Greenland have put European populists’ ties to the MAGA movement under strain MAGA v MEGA www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Recent warnings from 🇫🇷 and 🇬🇧 military chiefs about the need for Western Europe to prepare society for the losses of war have been met with some incredulity. But the Baltics, Nordics and Poland offer impressive lessons on the concept of “war readiness” economist.com/europe/2025/...

The mainstreaming and “embourgeoisement” of the 🇫🇷 far-right National Rally In 2017, 7% of those with a degree voted for the RN in the 1st round. By 2024, the figure was 22%—the same share that voted for Macron’s centrists. Even the gender gap has closed economist.com/briefing/202...

“France, despite its political chaos, scores pretty well” We ranked the performance of 36 of the world’s biggest economies in 2025 according to five criteria France came in 11th place, better than Germany (20th) and Britain (23rd

France’s junior defense minister Alice Rufo calls the US National Security Strategy an “extremely brutal” clarification of its ideological posture. This is the strongest official response from France so far

Macron will join Starmer, Merz and Zelensky in London today. Whatever you think of these three leaders’ domestic politics, the trio is emerging as a forceful new form of European leadership www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

According to French media reports the 🇫🇷 navy last night shot down five drones flying over the Ile Longue, in Brittany, home to France’s SNLE nuclear-armed submarines, the naval component of France’s nuclear deterrent

Trump's national security strategy is out and some of the Europe sections are shocking. "...the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism." www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Unloved at home, vigorous abroad. Macron, Merz and Starmer are forming Europe’s new trilateral diplomatic leadership economist.com/europe/2025/... from @economist.com

Don’t say you weren’t warned. New poll suggests Jordan Bardella would win second round of 🇫🇷 presidential election against any other of four tested candidates ⬇️

Macron on 🇷🇺 “We need to show we’re not weak against the power that threatens us the most” The 🇺🇸peace plan needed to be “discussed and improved…Nobody can tell 🇺🇦 which territorial concessions they’re ready to make…We want peace but we don’t want a peace that’s a capitulation” Speaking to RTL today

Across the French region of Languedoc-Roussillon alone, nearly 15,000 hectares of vines—the equivalent of four-fifths of the area of Washington, DC—are being torn out this year Why vineyards are disappearing in France In @economist.com this week economist.com/europe/2025/...

The horror of the terrorist attacks of November 13th 2015 plunged the City of Lights into darkness. Ten years on, Paris is mostly itself again. Yet the trauma lingers: in lives ended, families broken, spaces shrunk and the long shadow of dread economist.com/culture/2024...

🇫🇷 doing a good job of looking forwards and moving backwards today. It has just published its first national space strategy, 2025-2030. Its lower house has just voted to suspend Macron’s pension reform, the main structural achievement of his second term www.sgdsn.gouv.fr/files/files/...

Jordan Bardella is France’s most popular politician. His ideas would set 🇫🇷 on a collision path with not only EU institutions but with France’s main partner, Germany. For the RN leader, this seems to be the point In @economist.com this week economist.com/europe/2025/...

Our cover this week “Europe should take heart and recognise its own strength. Its military budget is already four times larger than Russia’s; its economy is ten times larger. Far from shying away from a financial contest with the Kremlin, Europe should embrace it—and win the war”

Roland Lescure knows full well what outsiders make of France’s messy politics. The best way to reassure investors is to “show the world that we’re not just a bunch of Gauls in a village fighting tooth and nail”, he says

Suspending France’s pension reform has dismayed many centrists. In an interview with The Economist @rolandlescure.bsky.social, the new 🇫🇷 finance minister, argues that “It’s the price of compromise and it’s the price of political stability” economist.com/europe/2025/...

“An analysis of 40 museum thefts in 1990-2022 shows that the most common is a stealth raid: thieves make off with artworks without alerting security agents. “Smash-and-grab” raids, like that at the Louvre, are next. Less than half the stolen items are ever recovered” economist.com/culture/2025...

This morning France puts a former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, behind bars at the Prison de la Santé in Paris. Collaborators apart, no western European president or prime minister has ever been to jail in post-war times economist.com/europe/2025/... from @economist.com

“The belt-tightening needed to stabilise the debt-to-GDP ratio in 🇫🇷 is >3% of GDP….Of G7 economies only 🇨🇦 enjoys low debt, a small necessary adjustment and the space to raise taxes. 🇫🇷 looks bad by all 3 measures” Timely analysis of the risks of public debt by my colleague @curr.bsky.social

France’s Fifth Republic, shaped to de Gaulle’s towering persona, has failed to shield the country from the parliamentary turmoil it was designed to bring to an end economist.com/europe/2025/... from @economist.com

The new 🇫🇷 prime minister Lecornu survives his first censure motion, by just 18 votes, and thanks to the Socialists. The irony is that Macron always wanted to peel them away from Mélenchon’s hard left. But what circumstances, what fragility, and what a price Votes for censure: 271 Votes needed: 289

France’s new prime minister is…the very one who resigned on Monday, Sébastien Lecornu. It rounds off the most chaotic and absurdist week in French politics in modern times

Despite everything else going on, France last night honoured Robert Badinter, the former justice minister who ended the death penalty in 🇫🇷 in 1981. He entered the Panthéon in a moving moment of national tribute that the French do so well

Desperately seeking someone After the most chaotic week in modern political life France is still searching for a prime minister economist.com/europe/2025/...

For sure, Macron’s troubles are partly of his own making. But there is something immensely sad about a pro-European leader and standard-bearer for the democratic centre ending up with such a political mess

Exactly what you need to know when you need to know it-- no fuss no muss. Chapeau!

What next for France after it loses its fourth prime minister in little over a year economist.com/europe/2025/... from @economist.com

What an absolute mess. The new 🇫🇷 PM Sébastien Lecornu has resigned after less than four weeks in the job. This is the curt communiqué just issued by the presidency

The two most interesting appointments in a pretty unchanged new 🇫🇷 government (just unveiled) are @rolandlescure.bsky.social as new finance min and the return of Bruno Le Maire to govt, at defence. Otherwise most big jobs, including @jnbarrot.bsky.social at foreign, stay as they were under Bayrou…

Emmanuel Macron remains a vigorous figure in foreign affairs and one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders. Yet no amount of energetic diplomacy abroad can mask what is happening at home: the unravelling of his great centrist venture economist.com/europe/2025/... from @economist.com