quarta-feira, 30 de abril de 2025
French interior minister under fire for slow response to deadly mosque stabbing
French
interior minister under fire for slow response to deadly mosque stabbing
Bruno
Retailleau attended campaign events before traveling to the scene of the crime.
April 30,
2025 4:00 am CET
By Victor
Goury-Laffont
https://www.politico.eu/article/french-interior-minister-slow-response-deadly-mosque-stabbing/
PARIS —
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau is taking heat for what critics say
was a slow response to the killing of a man who appeared to be targeted for his
Muslim faith.
Aboubakar
Cissé, a 23-year-old Malian, died after being stabbed dozens of times on Friday
while worshiping at a mosque in southern France. The local prosecutor said that
the attacker had filmed the stabbing, during which he shouted “I did it … your
shitty Allah,” multiple French media outlets reported.
Retailleau,
a popular right-wing politician who is running to lead France’s conservative
political party Les Républicains, responded on X about six hours hours later to
express “solidarity with the Muslim community.”
He attended
two campaign events over the weekend and only then traveled to meet with local
investigators and religious leaders in La Grande-Combe on Sunday.
Retailleau
has been quicker to visit the sites of other violent attacks after they
occurred. Less than a day before Friday’s mosque attack in La Grande-Combe, for
example, he went to Nantes after a high school student fatally stabbed a
15-year-old classmate and wounded others. That attack took place around noon;
Retailleau was on site within seven hours.
The interior
minister defended his delayed visit to the site of the attack on the Muslim man
by citing the ongoing investigation and lingering uncertainties surrounding the
case. On Tuesday, he hit back at those criticizing him for turning tragedies
into political grist.
“I do not
accept that such serious and painful issues should be exploited by parties or
associations that profit from a family’s misfortune. These methods are
shameful, and I will not allow myself to be intimidated or exploited,” he said
on X.
The
minister’s critics, however, say the lack of urgency points to a
double-standard — a claim that government spokesperson Sophie Primas tried to
bat down at a press conference on Monday — especially considering how quickly
Retailleau traveled to the scene during a recent stabbing that President
Emmanuel Macron had described as an act of “Islamist terrorism.”
That
stabbing, which was committed by an Algerian national who was described as
having a “schizophrenic profile,” took place at 3:40 p.m. The interior
minister’s trip to the site of the attack was confirmed less than two hours
later.
“When you
see the time it took for the Interior Minister to respond … it gives the
impression that French people of the Muslim faith have no place in our
country,” said Ludovic Mendes, a National Assembly member from Macron’s
centrist group who recently authored a report on Islamophobia in France.
Retailleau’s
detractors add that his fiery remarks criticizing Muslim headscarves — he
shouted “down with the veil” at a recent rally — fuel what Mendes describes as
“ordinary racism” in France at a time when official statistics show that
anti-Muslim hate crimes are rising. Reports of such incidents were up 72
percent from January through March this year compared with the same period in
2024, according to interior ministry figures.
Retailleau
also was criticized from within his own political camp. Xavier Bertrand, the
conservative president of the northern Hauts-de-France region and a supporter
of Retailleau’s party leadership run, told BFMTV he was “firmly convinced” that
the interior minister should have visited the attack site “straight away.”
“When a man
is savagely murdered in France because he is a Muslim, we have to fight that …
our outrage cannot depend on the circumstances,” Bertrand said.
The
suspected attacker fled the scene and remained at large for three days before
surrendering to authorities in Italy on Monday. Prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini said
that while hate was considered the most likely motive, other scenarios are
still being examined.
The
assailant’s lawyer, speaking to reporters in Italy, said his client had not
“said anything against Islam or Mosque” and was “confused” by the accusation
that his acts were motivated by hate.
Elena
Giordano contributed to this report.
Merz can’t count on Macron to save the EU’s Latin American trade deal
Merz
can’t count on Macron to save the EU’s Latin American trade deal
The
transatlantic trade war is increasing pressure on France to back a trade deal
with South America’s Mercosur bloc, but Paris isn’t ready to give in just yet.
April 28,
2025 6:00 am CET
By Giorgio
Leali
PARIS —
Despite increasing pressure from Berlin and Brussels — and the need to hit back
against Donald Trump's assault on global trade — France is still refusing to
endorse the EU's landmark Mercosur trade deal with Latin America.
Earlier this
month, Emmanuel Macron’s new best friend, incoming German Chancellor Friedrich
Merz, said the French president was reversing his opposition to the pact and
was “now leaning toward ratifying the Mercosur agreement.”
Not so fast.
French officials have been quick to deny Merz’s claim — with a foreign ministry
official saying Trump’s imposition of the highest U.S. tariffs in a century
“has not changed anything.”
Paris has
long been the EU's fiercest opponent to a pact with a bloc that includes the
agri powerhouses of Argentina and Brazil. It fears that a deluge of beef and
other food imports will undermine French farmers, one of the country's most
politically powerful groups.
“No, we
haven’t changed our position on Mercosur," confirmed an Élysée official,
also granted permission to speak on the condition of anonymity, as is customary
in France. “The content of the agreement has not changed, in particular the
lack of effective protection of sensitive agricultural sectors, which means
that the agreement remains unacceptable as it stands.”
France's
continued opposition is an annoyance to the EU's free traders, who reckon a
deal that boosts manufacturing exports to South America might be just what the
European Union needs as it seeks trading partners to replace a United States
lurching into protectionism.
The Mercosur
deal should, after all, create a common market of nearly 800 million people by
removing almost all tariffs.
But despite
its protestations, France is privately coming to terms with the fact that the
controversial agreement might soon be approved, whether Paris likes it or not.
New world
The deal,
sealed by EU chief executive Ursula von der Leyen and Mercosur leaders at a
December summit in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, is undergoing
translation and legal scrubbing and should go to a vote by EU member countries
in the fall.
France has
repeatedly said it would vote against the accord. But the deal’s supporters
hope that the trade war with the U.S. will push Paris to change its mind. After
all, Trump’s tariffs are disrupting trade relations with the U.S., the EU’s top
export destination, and the trade war only makes the case stronger for finding
new export markets.
A sign that
France could be receptive to that argument came from its trade minister,
Laurent Saint-Martin, who told POLITICO that Trump’s tariffs were “a wake-up
call on trade agreements” and that the Commission still had time to tweak the
deal and make it more acceptable for France.
Saint-Martin
stressed that France could back the deal only if it included “mirror clauses,”
which would impose the same production standards on South American exports that
apply to EU farmers.
“Saint-Martin
is already mitigating the 'no, whatever happens' from Paris,” said Elvire
Fabry, a trade expert at the Jacques Delors Institute think tank.
“Given the
new context, France would be ready to reconsider the agreement, in exchange for
guarantees on the mirror clauses," she said.
On top of
the Commission and other pro-trade countries, French businesses are also
increasing pressure on Paris to finally back the deal.
Fabrice Le
Saché, vice-president of France’s powerful lobby Medef, said the government was
softening its stance against the deal.
“The
international context pushes to accelerate,” he said.
No plan B?
But changing
position on the Mercosur deal would be tantamount to political suicide for
Macron and his fragile minority government, as the entire French political
class and much of the public strongly oppose it.
“France
cannot make a complete U-turn, without obtaining some concessions to evolve the
public debate in France,” Fabry said.
For years,
Macron and his minister asked Brussels to introduce mirror clauses. But that's
a no-go for the Commission, as Brussels doesn’t want to reopen negotiations
that took more than 20 years to hammer out, especially to try to add conditions
that the Mercosur countries have already rejected. Even Macron’s allies
acknowledge this is asking for the moon.
“Everyone
knows it is impossible to include mirror clauses in the Mercosur deal,” said
Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, a French member of the European Parliament from Macron’s
liberal Renew group.
In a sign
that even the French government is realizing it could lose the battle, Paris is
pitching the idea of introducing a “safeguard clause” that would allow Brussels
to automatically cap imports of sensitive agricultural products if there is
evidence that imports from Mercosur are disrupting the European market.
If the deal
stays as it is, France has pledged to vote it down in a Council vote in the
fall. But Paris is struggling to put together a blocking minority (at least
four countries representing 35 percent of the EU’s population), which it needs
to veto the agreement because onetime potential allies like Italy and Austria
have now committed to backing the accord.
But the
deal’s critics are also putting their hopes in the European Parliament, which
also gets a say when it comes to ratification.
Even Arnaud
Rousseau, the president of the influential French farming union FNSEA,
acknowledged that forming a blocking minority of member countries “might be
difficult,” but said he hoped French farmers would be vindicated when MEPs vote
on it.
“If [von der
Leyen] loses this vote, it’s the end of her mandate,” he told POLITICO.
