Category: France

Officially launched by the government on January 5th 2026, the national campaign on the legal obligations regarding undergrowth-clearing, as well as the essential actions to be taken, are now in force.

These rules had previously been in effect for many parts of southern France, but now five extra départements in the north and centre of the country are affected; Côtes-d’Armor, Finistère, Sarthe, Maine-et-Loire, Eure-et-Loir and Indre.

In 2025, nearly 190 buildings were severely damaged or destroyed as a result of forest or bush fires. This represents the worst toll in recent decades.

Analysis carried out after the fires show that 90 percent of the houses destroyed in the forest fires were located on land that had not been cleared of bushes or was poorly maintained.

What you should do

The best period to clear bushes on your property, known in French as débroussailler, is in the winter. It’s better to do it when the trees are not too full. 

The French government advises doing so in nine steps:

• Trim back bushy vegetation
• Cut back branches touching homes or even trees themselves (if they are too close, it is necessary to ensure they do not touch one another)
• Prune the remaining trees
• Remove undergrowth beneath trees
• Cut back vegetation near buildings
• Limit the width and length of hedges and keep them away from buildings
• Clear the gutters and remove leaves as well as pine needles
• Keep woodpiles and any other fuel storage away from buildings 
• Dispose of plant waste at a waste disposal centre (déchetterie)

Maintenance of areas that have already been cleared involves keeping ground vegetation to a minimum by cutting grass and scrub, and tidying up after maintenance work. This includes removing plant debris and clearing away any potential fuel sources from around the property. These tasks can be carried out in the spring.

READ ALSO: How to protect your French property from wildfires

The law

The above tasks are advised for homeowners everywhere, however in some parts of the country they are legal requirements.

This mostly affects people living close to wooded areas, but you can check your postcode in the online tool here to find out if you are covered by the law.

If homeowners are not at their property during the relevant period – for example second-home owners – it is their responsibility to ensure that someone else carries out the works.

Speaking to French media France Info, Corinne Henry, head of the Forestry Office at the Forest Fire Defence Agency at the Var préfecture, said; “If the legal obligations regarding brush clearing are properly met, people are safe in their homes.

“We saw this during the Gonfaron fires. Where the brush had been cleared, nine out of ten houses suffered no damage.”

READ MORE: Wildfire prevention: The legal obligations for French property owners

New départements subject to brush-clearing requirements

As a result of climate change, forest and bush fires are spreading to new areas. This means that 48 departments and nearly 7,400 local authorities are now subject to brush-clearing requirements, versus 43 in 2025. You can find the map here.

These are: Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Hautes-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Ardèche, Ariège, Aude, Aveyron, Bouches-du-Rhône, Charente, Charente-Maritime, Cher, Côtes-d’Armor, Dordogne, Drôme, Eure, Eure-et-Loir, Finistère, Gard, Haute-Garonne, Gers, Gironde, Hérault, Ille-et-Vilaine, Indre, Indre-et-Loire, Isère, Landes, Loir-et-Cher, Loire, Loiret, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Lozère, Maine-et-Loire, Morbihan, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Pyrénées-Orientales, Sarthe, Savoie, Deux-Sèvres, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, Var, Vaucluse, Vienne, Corse-du-Sud, Haute-Corse.

The new départements are; Côtes-d’Armor, Finistère, Sarthe, Maine-et-Loire, Eure-et-Loir and Indre.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats were headed for their worst election outcome in over a century on Tuesday, as migration and welfare concerns obscured broad support for her defiant stance toward Washington over Greenland.

In power since 2019, Frederiksen, 48, had campaigned on a promise that her tough and tested leadership skills would help the Nordic nation of six million navigate a complex relationship with US President Donald Trump and the European response to Russia‘s war in Ukraine.

But on Tuesday she emerged bruised both from the left and the right at home, where the cost-of-living crisis has come to the front of voter concerns, observers said.

Social Democrats seen winning 38 seats

Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, the architects of Denmark’s cradle-to-grave welfare state, were seen winning 38 seats in the legislature, the Folketing, compared with 50 four years earlier.

Read moreDanish PM seeking third term as election underway

Her chances of staying in power for a third term were not gone although coalition talks could take weeks.

“I’m ready to take on the responsibility,” she told supporters in the parliament building in central Copenhagen late into the night. “It will be difficult.”

Frederiksen sought to downplay the decline in her party’s popularity, which comes amid a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment globally and several external shocks.

“We’ve had to deal with war, we’ve been threatened by the American president and in those almost seven years we’ve gone down 4 percentage points, I think that’s okay,” she said.

Frederiksen’s left-wing bloc was seen winning 84 seats in parliament, in the 179-seat legislature, versus 77 for the right-leaning parties, projections by local media based on 100% of votes counted showed.

Many of her left-wing supporters appeared frustrated with an immigration policy they saw as too tough, while some on the right saw her too soft and untrustworthy on economic issues.

“She is between a rock and a hard place because the numbers are bad for her,” said Andreas Thyrring, a partner at Ulveman & Borsting public affairs advisory firm.

In Brussels, Frederiksen is widely respected for her clear line on Greenland and for her efforts to ramp up Denmark’s defence spending in the wake of the Ukraine conflict. But her negotiating style is seen by some as abrasive and many Danes sought change.

Read moreDenmark election dominated by domestic issues followed by Greenland crisis

The vote was also being closely watched in Greenland, with many hoping it will be a chance for the territory to leverage Trump’s unprecedented desire to wield control over the Arctic island to wrangle concessions from its former colonial power in Copenhagen.

Migration policy in focus 

Underscoring the broad backlash against Frederiksen, support for the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, led by Morten Messerschmidt, surged to 9.1% with all votes counted according to public broadcaster DR, up nearly 7 percentage points compared to the last election.

Messerschmidt had campaigned on a pledge to ensure zero net migration of Muslims and to abolish petrol taxes as a measure to ease living costs.

“The fact that the Danish People’s Party has now tripled its support clearly shows that Danes are fed up with this and that there are a great many people who want a different direction for Denmark,” Messerschmidt said after exit polls were published.

The non-aligned Moderates party of Lars Lokke Rasmussen could hold the key to the next ruling coalition, some observers said, with the outgoing foreign minister calling on Frederiksen to drop her calls for a wealth tax.

“There is no hard-red majority to our left, and no hard-blue majority to our right,” Rasmussen said at his party’s election-night party in Copenhagen.

Frederiksen proposed the tax – at a modest rate of 0.5% aimed at funding education reform – to rebuild her leftist credentials that had been damaged by a coalition with the centre-right.

She has also overseen one of the toughest approaches to migration in Europe, with refugee status temporary, conditional support and expectations of integration in society.

She also co-led a push by nine EU countries for easier expulsion of foreign criminals, and earlier this year proposed legislation to increase deportations.

The leader of the Liberal Party, Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, said he was no longer interested in coalition rule with Frederiksen, underscoring complex talks ahead for her.

“The possibility is there, Lars!” Poulsen said in Copenhagen in an apparent nudge to Rasmussen.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)

Issued on: 19/03/2026 – 16:25

2 min Reading time

The court ruled that the suspension was not justified because Shein had already removed the products from its platform.

However, it upheld a ban on Shein reselling lawful adult pornographic products without adding age-verification filters to its site, which the retailer has acknowledged are difficult to implement effectively.

France’s consumer watchdog, the Directorate General for Competition Policy Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, in November identified listings for banned weapons and sex dolls resembling children offered for sale by third-party vendors in Shein’s marketplace. The revelations prompted the government to seek a temporary suspension of the site.

Shein responded at the time by banning all sex dolls and removing its adult products category globally. 

A lower French court ruled in December that blocking Shein was “disproportionate” given the sale of the items in question had been “sporadic” and the site had since removed the listings.

Upmarket French store BHV opens fast-fashion Shein outlets outside Paris

Fast fashion under fire

France has also taken online marketplaces AliExpress and Joom to court for listing childlike sex dolls for sale.

Six platforms were reported to the authorities after the Shein scandal broke, Commerce Minister Serge Papin said last November, including five singled out for selling illegal products.

In December, police arrested some 20 people across France on suspicion of buying the dolls online. Two men in the eastern city of Mulhouse have since been convicted and placed on the sex offenders register. 

Meanwhile the European Commission last month opened an investigation into Shein over the sale of illegal goods and the platform’s recommendation systems, which it said it was concerned could have “addictive” features. 

EU backs tough legislation to slash food waste and rein in ‘fast fashion’

 

Shein, founded in China in 2012 and now based in Singapore, has been under fire since it established operations in France.

It is criticised by both campaign groups and politicians for generating environmental pollution, selling goods that fail to comply with basic regulations and imposing poor working conditions in its Chinese factories.

France has proposed a law to regulate ultra-fast fashion retailers like Shein and Temu that would impose extra tax on products sold by companies with a poor environmental record. It would also ban them from advertising or offering shoppers free returns. 

(with newswires)

As with the recent Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, the proposed venues for 2030 will cover a wide area – stretching from the Alps down to Nice on the Mediterranean coast.

As with Milan, the proposal is to hold events such as ice hockey and figure skating in the town, and ski events in Alpine ski resorts.

The new mayor, elected on Sunday, has no issue with Nice hosting the ice hockey, the figure skating, curling, short track skating and the closing ceremony, along with the Olympic Village, but he is opposed to where the venues have been allocated.

Ciotti wants the ice hockey to be moved from the stadium of the city’s football club – he does not want the Ligue 1 side to be homeless for months at a cost, he claims, of €80 million.

The new mayor also wants to cancel the organisers’ plans to build a skating arena and the Olympic village in the west of France’s fifth largest city.

Instead, Ciotti has floated the idea of holding the figure skating at the city’s existing exhibition centre, which hosted the 2012 world championships, and says the Olympic Village should be built on the site of a police barracks, 15 kilometres from the site allocated by the organisers, which is due to be closed down in the next year.

Ciotti is adamant about the ice hockey being moved but admitted during the campaign that if the planning process for the skating rink was too far advanced then he was prepared to accept the existing plans.

The two sports would be a real cash cow for Nice as they represent 60 percent of the Games ticket revenues.

Ciotti, who once led the mainstream right-wing party Les Républicains but was expelled in 2024 when he formed an alliance with the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), is at odds with the region’s president, Renaud Muselier.

When it came to the Games, Muselier – who since 2022 has been a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party – was on the same page as Ciotti’s predecessor, the centre-right mayor Christian Estrosi.

Indeed until they exchanged formal pleasantries on Monday, Muselier and Ciotti had not spoken since 2022 when the former quit the Les Républicains.

“We have a real problem regarding Nice with a mayor elected who is for the Games, but not in line with the original plan,” Muselier, who oversees the progress made by Solideo, the public institution responsible for the delivery of the venues for the Olympics, said on Monday.

“Those plans need to be put in writing in order to see if they are viable for Nice. If not we will have to re-evaluate.”

Muselier said he would not “hesitate to change everything if necessary” and said he had a “Plan B”.

However, he cast doubt on the practicality of Ciotti’s alternatives for the figure skating venue.

“I am not qualified to comment on such a matter but I have been told the venue (at the exhibition centre) is only at the level of a junior world championship,” he said.

Muselier said time was short for Ciotti to come to a final decision.

“Solideo has been working on the figures which should be made public in April, so everything must be decided by the end of that month,” he said.

As for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), its executive director Christophe Dubi told AFP last month that changes in political leadership were “part and parcel of organising a project over a seven-year period”.

“Elections are held during that time. That is normal, it is part of the lifetime of a project.

“That won’t force us to scrap plans which have been in the works for several years.

“Now it is for Solideo, who are working intensively on all these projects, to continue their excellent work,” said Dubi, who unlike Muselier insisted there was no alternative plan.

Ciotti’s election is just the latest problem to affect the 2030 Games.

The organising committee (Cojop) has lost four key players in the past three months owing to internal disagreements.

Last month chief executive Cyril Linette became the latest to step down after falling out with the Cojop president Edgar Grospiron, who had hand-picked him for the role in April last year.

Denmark’s left bloc headed by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen took an early lead in Tuesday’s general election but failed to secure a majority, exit polls showed, with Frederiksen’s Social Democrats posting their weakest showing in 125 years. FRANCE 24’s Haxie Meyers-Belkin speaks with Ulrik Pram Gad, Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

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Issued on: 19/03/2026 – 17:59

2 min Reading time

Media, transport and energy tycoon Bolloré is ⁠suspected of having bribed foreign officials in the Paris suburb of Puteaux during the election campaign of presidents Faure Gnassingbe ⁠in Togo and Alpha Conde in Guinea, in what has come to be known as the “African Ports” affair, the spokesperson said on Thursday.

Bolloré was ​placed under formal investigation in 2018 ‌over allegations his company undercharged for work on behalf of presidential candidates in Guinea and Togo ‌in return for port contracts.

French business tycoon Vincent Bolloré retires, but unlikely to let go

The Bolloré Group, which is controlled and run ​by the billionaire’s family, used to own logistics assets in Africa but sold them to shipping ​company MSC Group in 2022.

In March 2025, a collective of African NGOs from Togo, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Democratic Republic of Congo filed a complaint to the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office accusing the conglomerate of systematically using corrupt practices to secure lucrative port concessions in at least five African nations, before selling its African logistics operations for €5.7 billion in 2022 to Swiss-Italian shipping giant MSC.

Bolloré and his family ​also own significant stakes in ​listed companies including Vivendi and Havas. He also controls more than a quarter of French media, including controversial news channel CNews and far-right weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

French billionaire Bolloré targeted in African ports corruption case

‘Fair trial impossible’

Bolloré’s lawyers Céline Astolfe and Olivier Baratelli said in a statement it will be “impossible to hold a fair trial”. They also announced they would appeal against the judges’ ruling “on procedural grounds”.

“We strongly reaffirm that the transactions that took place more than 15 years ago between the Bolloré and Havas groups, of which Bolloré was unaware, involving €300,000 paid by cheque and duly recorded in the accounts, were part of the normal course of business relations between these two groups,” they said.

There are two further co-defendants ​in the corruption cases – Gilles Alix, a former board member at Vivendi, and Jean-Philippe Dorent, who is currently head ⁠of Havas International Consulting.

(with newswires)

The seed reveals that people in France have been cultivating this immensely popular variety of grape since at least the 1400s, the scientists said in a new study.

It is not possible to say whether the fruit was “eaten like table grapes or whether people made wine from it at the time”, study co-author Laurent Bouby told AFP.

But the research provides a link between modern France – one of the world’s largest wine-producing and -consuming countries – and its distant wine-loving past.

Another study co-author, Ludovic Orlando, pointed out that the Hundred Years’ War between England and France finally wrapped up in the mid-1400s.

And the brief life of France’s patron saint, Joan of Arc, was also in the 15th century.

“She could have eaten the same grapes as us,” the paleogeneticist at the University of Toulouse told AFP.

The seed was found in a toilet in a 15th-century hospital in Valenciennes in northern France. At the time, toilets were sometimes used as rubbish bins, the researchers explained.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, involved sequencing the genome of 54 grape seeds dating from the Bronze Age – from around 2,300 BC – to the Middle Ages.

It confirms that generations of winegrowers had been using what are today called “clonal propagation” techniques, such as preserving cuttings of particular grape varieties for 600 years, the researchers said.

Ancient texts had offered indications this was happening, “but outside of paleogenomics, it is very difficult to characterise this technique”, said Bouby of the Institute of Evolutionary Science of Montpellier.

But the new research found evidence this technique was being used in many areas as far back as the Iron Age, around 625–500 BC.

The oldest grapes analysed in the study were from wild vines in the French region of Nîmes dated to around 2,000 BC.

Domesticated vines then started to appear between 625 and 500 BC in France’s southern Var département.

This lines up with when colonising Greeks were believed to have introduced viticulture – cultivating grapevines – to France, after founding the city of Marseille.

Orlando said it was already known that wine was traded at the time by the Greeks and the Etruscans, because of wine jugs called amphora that lasted through the centuries.

But the DNA of the grape seeds, particularly those from the ancient Roman period, revealed long-distance exchanges of domesticated grape varieties from places including Spain, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East.

It also showed there was plenty of genetic mixing of domesticated grape varieties and local wild vines during the Roman period, particularly in northern France.

In the future, “it would be very interesting to work closely with historians who have access to texts describing certain winegrowing techniques” to find out more, Orlando said.

Pinot noir, which is often associated with France’s Burgundy region, is the fourth most widely grown grape in the world, according to the study.

Wine fled Uganda in January, days after a presidential election that saw Museveni obtain a controversial seventh term in office and following a military raid on Wine’s home ordered by General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is Museveni’s son and the head of the military. His home was later raided again and his wife assaulted.

Watch moreUganda: Bobi Wine’s wife tells him to stay in hiding after assault at their home

Wine told FRANCE 24 that Kainerugaba “confessed to killing 24 of my friends” and “said publicly that he was looking for me to make sure I am the 25th dead body”.

In light of these threats, the raids on his home and the attack on his wife, Wine said he took the decision to flee.

‘I am not going to negotiate my freedom’

Speaking from Washington, Wine rejected any transactional approach to his return, saying “I am not going to negotiate my freedom.”

He also called on all democracies to impose sanctions on Museveni, his son and those who “violate human rights” and “subvert democracy and the rule of law” in Uganda.

“It is not about me, but about ourselves,” the star singer-turned-politician said, framing his fight as one for an entire generation of Ugandans.

Museveni has been in power since 1986.