Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Sophie Pedder Profile picture
Sophie Pedder
@PedderSophie
Paris Bureau Chief, The Economist. Author of Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation (Bloomsbury 2018) https://t.co/bH1e4iauhL
Birger Leth Profile picture Gargouille Lambert, Esq. 🥐🍷 Profile picture Magdi Shalash Profile picture Aric Profile picture 4 subscribed
Mar 14 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Macron on French TV this evening :
The war in 🇺🇦 is “existential…”If Russia were to win, life for the French would change. We would no longer have security in Europe. Who can seriously believe that Putin, who has respected no limits, would stop there?” Image Macron: “All options are possible. In order to have peace in Ukraine, we cannot be weak”
May 3, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
"After nightfall on Saturday April 22 Admiral Rolland put a call through to the president on a secure line…It was a dangerous mission, but Macron was ready to take the risk."
The inside story of the French rescue operation from Khartoum in @TheEconomist
economist.com/1843/2023/05/0… I spoke to the French military and diplomatic officials who planned the operation, as well as the pilot of the first A400M to land in Khartoum. The crucial early steps that France took – including taking control of the airstrip – enabled allies to conduct their own airlifts
Apr 24, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
A reminder of the different nationalities that France helped to evacuate overnight from Sudan: not only French, not only European ...and of the goodwill this generates towards France👇
Apr 23, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Robust response on this from France, which expresses “consternation” after China’s ambassador to France Lu Shaye stated that ex-Soviet countries “don’t have effective status in international law” as “sovereign countries”. His comments below, to @DariusRochebin @LCI Translated version of the Chinese ambassador’s comments, made in French, below by @AntoineBondaz 👇
Mar 24, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
What is going on in France?
Last night saw
- 1.08m protesters on the streets across 🇫🇷
- 903 acts of arson in Paris
- 457 people arrested across 🇫🇷
- 441 policemen injured
Why are the French so angry?
Is this another gilets-jaunes uprising?

Source: Interior ministry 1/ It’s too simple to say this uprising is only because the French don’t want to retire later, although that's true. The real anger, which the govt seems to have underestimated, is at the way it was done, using article 49.3, and the sense this embodies Macron's governing style 2/
Jan 4, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Wow, France is really getting serious. According to an Elysée source, Macron has just spoken to Zelensky and 🇫🇷 is preparing to send Ukraine light combat tanks, thought to be the AMX-10 RC With confirmation from Kyiv:
Nov 6, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Most of the time you just ignore this stuff. But occasionally it is too absurd. France has its problems, for sure. But it is trapped in a spiral of chaos and decline? Really? A response in four charts. Short🧵 The French economy recovered to pre-pandemic levels in Q2 2022. This is not the case in Germany or the UK
Source: OECD
Sep 8, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The Queen’s reign spanned ten 🇫🇷presidents over 2 republics: Auriol, Coty, De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard d’Estaing, Mitterrand, Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande, Macron. She was Francophile and francophone, and clearly enjoyed her visits to France. Here she is with De Gaulle in 1960
🇬🇧🇫🇷 The Queen was 51 years old when Emmanuel Macron was born. On her platinum jubilee this year, he sent a message describing her as the “golden thread” that binds 🇫🇷 and 🇬🇧 together, and gave her a thoroughbred horse from the French Republican Guard
Jun 19, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Disaster for Macron who loses his parliamentary majority tonight This is a seat projection by @Ipsos. It shows Macron's centrist alliance Ensemble winning only 224 seats, down from 350 in 2017. Mélenchon's left-wing alliance NUPES secures 149. Biggest surprise is surge for Le Pen's RN, from 8 seats in 2017 to 89. Republicans save face with 78
Jun 16, 2022 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
It’s now official: Macron, Draghi and Scholz are on their way to see Zelensky in Kyiv The clock in the carriage shows 1:55am this morning. Macron went straight from Moldova to board the train with Scholz and Draghi at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Why this timing? The Elysée says it’s the EU summit next week and Ukraine’s hopes for a ´strong symbolic gesture’
May 20, 2022 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
Official. Macron 2.0 looks...quite a lot like the previous version. @BrunoLeMaire stays on at Finance, bringing unusual stability to the job. He is now the longest-serving 🇫🇷 finance minister under the 5th Republic, having broken the record held by Giscard d'Estaing in 1969-1974 Main surprises 1: 🇫🇷 foreign minister is @AmbColonna, now ambassador to UK. An experienced pro-European career diplomat she was Chirac’s spokesperson during 2003 invasion of Iraq, then Europe minister, but is Macron-compatible--and will have no illusions about the Johnson govt
Apr 24, 2022 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
He’s done it. Emmanuel Macron has been re-elected president of France. A stunning result
Macron : 58.2%
Le Pen : 41.8%
Source: Ipsos This is a historic result. Macron is the first sitting French president to have been re-elected for 20 years. He also now becomes the only president under the Fifth Republic to have been returned to office by direct universal suffrage while holding a parliamentary majority
Apr 24, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A big day today as the French elect their next president. Whatever you think of Emmanuel Macron, this is a vote about whether the democratic centre can hold against the force of nationalism and populism, embodied by Marine Le Pen The upward trend in the Le Pen vote shows that 🇫🇷 is no better sheltered from populist forces than anywhere else. Her father scored 18% in 2002. She scored 34% in 2017. Any score today in the 40% range will confirm the deep discontent in fractured France
economist.com/interactive/eu…
Apr 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
🇫🇷 goes into electoral blackout tonight before voting on Sunday. Last polls:

Macron 57%, Le Pen 43% (OpinionWay)
Macron 55.5%, Le Pen 44.5% (Elabe)
Macron 55.5%, Le Pen 44.5% (BVA)
Macron 55%, Le Pen 45% (Ifop)

No candidate has closed a 2R poll lead this big, this late, and won Image The main risk, however, is turn-out. Macron will win only if enough of those especially on the left who did not pick him in the first round, and are instinctively hostile to him, go and vote for him anyway, even if only to keep Le Pen out
Apr 21, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Some thoughts on last night’s Macron v Le Pen debate. She needed to show she's fit to govern (she didn’t). He needed to avoid patronising her (he couldn’t help himself, mostly with body language). But Macron clearly outclassed her on competence, precision + coherence. Highlights: Le Pen fluffed the opening moments by starting to speak before the debate jingle played. Hard to fault her for enthusiasm. But still
Mar 27, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In other news, the French start voting for their next president two weeks today. Our forecasting model shows that the probability of Emmanuel Macron winning has been falling back, and that Marine Le Pen’s chances of making the second round have been rising sharply Macron remains the strong favourite. Our model gives him a 90% probability of victory. But that figure has been sliding back since he announced his plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65. It is always worth recalling that low-probability events do happen
Nov 19, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I re-read Charles Maurras, Maurice Barrès and other fin-de-siècle reactionary, nationalist French thinkers in order to try to make sense of Eric Zemmour, France's hard-right TV pundit. The parallels are chilling

In @TheEconomist this week
economist.com/books-and-arts… Two sinister obsessions link today's reactionary discourse to earlier nationalists. One is a belief in an immutable “eternal France”, rooted in ancestral soil. For Maurras, this was “le pays réel”. Zemmour entitles a book chapter “The Land and the Dead” after a speech by Barrès
Jan 25, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Short health warning about French presidential polls 15 months before 2022 election. In Jan 2016, same distance from the 2017 vote, only one poll tested Macron—as a Socialist candidate. The far more obvious PS candidate was Hollande. (In the end it was Hamon, who got 6%) 1/5 The assumption then was that the PS was capable of winning 18-20% of the 1st-round vote. And this, even if Mélenchon got 9-11%. Because there was no credible centrist to rob the left of centre-left voters (Bayou, who in the end withdrew and backed Macron, polled around 12%) 2/5
Nov 1, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Important interview with Macron on Al Jazeera. There's still much misrepresentation (wilful or not) of laïcité. It's not state atheism, nor the persecution of religion, but the protection of the right to believe, or not to believe, + the separation of religion from public affairs Here Macron is explaining this. “Our country has no problem with any religion. Each is can exercise it freely here. No stigmatisation”
Sep 29, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Much confusion over Macron’s Russia policy today, after he meets Tikhanovskaya in Vilnius BUT says “Our vision is that if we want to build a lasting peace on the continent we have to work with Russia.” Has he ditched Putin? Or was this a misreading? @BrunoTertrais @Mij_Europe 1/6 Maybe Macron is just stubborn. No leader likes to admit being wrong. He is masterful at rationalising ex post facto a policy shift as a natural evolution in the face of changing facts. And he is pragmatic, an attribute easy to dismiss as inconsistent (but can be constructive) 2/6
Sep 7, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
No doubt that the covid-19 situation in France is now more worrying than in the UK. But British complacency seems to me misguided. In early August France also thought it had the virus under control post-lock-down.

(chart via @jburnmurdoch) 1/5 New cases in UK on Sept 6 = 2,988
France was at this level (2,846) on August 14th. Since then numbers in France have surged.
Daily new cases on Fridays:

Aug 21: 4,586
Aug 28: 7,379
Sep 4: 8,975

2/5