Category: France

Inside France is editor Emma Pearson’s weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Election fever

Within 48 hours of France’s highly contested local elections ending, attention had already switched to the presidential elections in spring of 2027. 

Really we’ve been talking about them since 2024, due to a combination of France’s fractured political landscape, deadlocked parliament and the fact that Emmanuel Macron cannot stand again, due to the constitutional limit of two consecutive terms for French presidents. 

But the local elections represented the last time that French voters are due to go to the polls before 2027 (there are Senate elections in September, but senators are elected using a byzantine system that doesn’t involve a direct vote) so we’re now into full campaign mode.

And I can pretty much guarantee that the number one media topic – especially non-French media – will be the likelihood of the far right candidate winning.

I wrote about how it feels, as an immigrant, to live in a state of constant gnawing anxiety about the growth of the far right.

READ ALSO: OPINION: For foreigners in France, each election brings a creeping sense of dread

I don’t pretend to be able to predict an election more than a year out – actually I don’t think anyone can – but I think it’s important to note that Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party consistently under performs compared to polls, as it did on Sunday, where predicted close races such as Marseille, Toulon and Nîmes turned into reasonably comfortable wins for their centre right and centre left opponents.

Also the parties of the centre-right, centre and left can unite to block the far right, and indeed have done so repeatedly during recent French history – there is nothing inevitable about this.

Podcast

There’s an election special episode of the Talking France podcast this week, looking at all the results of Sunday’s local elections and well as what, if anything, they tell us about the French political landscape – listen here.

Headline of the week

Sometimes speaking two languages just makes the world a lot funnier, for example in this headline from French daily Le Parisien: 100 g de shit étaient cachés entre les fesses d’un détenu de la prison de Beauvais

In French ‘shit’ (pronounced sheeet) is a common slang term for cannabis, so for Francophones the headline is entirely unremarkable “100g of hash found between the buttocks of a detainee at Beauvais prison”.

For the rest of us, it goes in another direction entirely.

Stained glass of the week 

I learned this week that Paris’ Hotel de Ville has an old-looking stained glass window which is in fact not only modern but regularly updated, as the name of each mayor of the city is engraved on it once they leave office – here’s Anne Hidalgo with her newly inscribed name.

C’est une tradition pour chaque Maire de Paris à la fin de son mandat, mon nom est désormais gravé sur un vitrail de l’Hôtel de Ville. Un des derniers temps de ce mandat !

[image or embed]

— Anne Hidalgo (@annehidalgo.bsky.social) 23 March 2026 at 17:45

 

In fact the entire Hotel de Ville building is much newer than it looks, having been rebuilt in 1874 due to the previous town hall being burned down during the Paris Commune.

The site is very old, however, and there has been a municipal building in roughly the same place since 1357.

The square in front of the town hall is now Place de l’Hotel de Ville, but was previously known as the Place de grève. It served as the place where day-labourers went to try and find work, and gave us the modern French word grève (strike).

It was also used for high-profile executions including of François Ravaillac, the man who had assassinated Henri IV, who was “scalded with burning sulphur, molten lead and boiling oil and resin, his flesh then being torn by pincers” before being torn apart by four horses, and his body burnt – the entire process took hours and was apparently watched by a large and enthusiastic crowd.

These days, entertainment in the square includes the Christmas market and annual free summer concert, Fnac Live.

Trailblazer 

Below is the French gold-medal winning athlete Violette Morris, who was banned from taking part in the 1928 Olympics for ‘immorality’, due mainly to her habit of wearing trousers.

She’s in my mind following the news that all female athletes will have to submit to gender testing to prove that they are ‘normal women’ in order to take part in the 2028 Olympics. 

Violette Morris, pictured in 1938 at a police station after being arrested for murder. She was later acquitted by reason of self defence. Photo by AFP

Violette herself was perhaps not the greatest human being – she went on to become an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator and was assassinated by the resistance in 1944 – but she was a genuine trailblazer for women’s sport, winning medals in javelin, discus and shot put and then switching careers to motor racing. 

Inside France is editor Emma Pearson’s weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Yemen‘s Houthi rebels announced their entry into the Middle East war on Saturday by launching a ballistic missile towards Israel, as the world struggled to contain the economic damage of a conflict now entering its second month.

The intervention of Iran‘s Yemeni allies in Tehran’s conflict with Israel and the United States will spark concern about disruptions to Red Sea shipping, with trade from the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz already choked off.

With Hormuz all but impassable, many shipments to and from the region go through the Omani port of Salalah, on the Arabian Sea, but Danish shipping giant Maersk said operations had been temporarily suspended there after a drone attack injured one worker and damaged a crane.

Pakistan, which has been a go-between between US and Iranian officials, is to host foreign ministers from regional powers Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt in Islamabad on Monday for talks on the crisis.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has thanked Islamabad “for its mediation efforts to stop the aggression”, and Germany‘s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul had said on Friday that he expected a direct US-Iran meeting in Pakistan “very soon”.

US President Donald Trump‘s special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Friday he believed Iran would hold talks with Washington within a week. “It could solve it all,” he said.

The war began when the United States and Israel launched a wave of airstrikes across Iran, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, engulfing the Middle East in conflict and triggering global economic pain by sending oil and gas prices soaring.

With no end to the conflict in sight despite Trump’s optimism that US forces have obliterated Iran’s military, a spokesman for the Houthis issued a video statement declaring that the group had launched ballistic missiles towards Israeli bases.

Read moreIran targets US public opinion with online information war

A few hours earlier, the Israeli military had said it had “identified the launch of a missile from Yemen toward Israeli territory, aerial defence systems are operating to intercept the threat”.

There were no reports of any casualties or damage in Israel, and the missile was reportedly intercepted.

During Israel’s recent war in Gaza the Houthis, claiming solidarity with the Palestinians, attacked shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

But, until Saturday, they had sat out the latest conflict, which has only seen the Red Sea grow in importance.

Saudi Arabia has diverted a large proportion of its oil exports to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran says it has closed to shipping from hostile powers.

Iran’s military said on Saturday that it had targeted a US logistics vessel near the Omani port of Salalah on the Arabian Sea. Oman said a drone attack on the port wounded a foreign worker.

Air travel has also been disrupted. On Saturday, authorities in Kuwait and in the city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan said airport facilities had been damaged in strikes.

Unexploded cluster bombs

Fire also broke out after Iranian missiles and drones hit the Khalifa Economic Zone Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, injuring six people. The firm Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) reported significant damage from the attack on its facility.

In Iran, meanwhile, production was shut down at a major steel plant in the southwest after US-Israeli strikes, according to a statement from the Khuzestan Steel Company, cited by the Shargh newspaper.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have warned they will retaliate for any economic damage by striking industrial sites across the region, having earlier issued similar warnings for US military bases and hotels hosting American troops.

The Guards also said that they had found and dismantled more than 120 unexploded cluster bombs, alleging they were dropped during US and Israeli attacks several days ago on the southern province of Fars.

Read moreFinancial analysts move to counter Trump’s Middle East war uncertainty with ‘TACO’ index

Israel announced fresh strikes on Tehran and an AFP journalist in the city reported around 10 intense blasts and a plume of black smoke overnight.

Pezeshkian sent a message to other countries in the region, warning: “If you want development and security, don’t let our enemies run the war from your lands.”

An Iranian missile and drone attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on Friday wounded at least 12 American soldiers, two of them seriously, according to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified officials.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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Issued on: 28/03/2026 – 16:30

1 min Reading time

The incident occurred around 3:30 am in front of a Bank of America building in the chic 8th arrondissement, a couple of streets from the Champs-Elysees.

Police grabbed the man just after he placed a device, made of five litres of liquid, believed to be fuel, and an ignition system, one of the sources said.

The ignition component had 650 grams of explosive powder in it, according to an initial assessment. The whole device was taken to the Paris police’s forensics lab for full analysis.

France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor’s office told AFP it had immediately taken over the investigation, and confirmed the suspect caught was in police custody.

It said the probe it has launched was into “attempted damage by fire or other dangerous means in connection with a terrorist undertaking” and a “terrorist criminal conspiracy”.

Both the Paris judicial police and France’s domestic intelligence service, the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), were involved in the probe, the office told AFP.

France’s interior minister, Laurent Nunez, on X hailed the speedy action by the police officers, given “the current international situation”, in which European countries have increased domestic vigilance because of the war in the Middle East.

Nunez said that, in France, “vigilance remains more than ever at a high level”.

(With newswires)