Rivals in Arms: The Rise of UK-France Defence Relations in the Twenty-First Century
The untold story of the thriving yet complicated defense relationship of two countries caught between strategic decline and global ambitions. As the UK leaves the European Union and as the multilateral international order is increasingly under stress, bilateral security links are more important than ever. Among such relationships, the UK-France partnership has become particularly critical in the past decades.
How the French Understand Immigrant Integration and Citizenship
On December 9, 2020 will be celebrated the 115th anniversary of the 1905 law on French secularism (laïcité). On the very same day, a new law project will be presented by the French government, with the objective of further strengthening the “republican values” in order to fight against so-called “Islamist separatism” within French society.
French public opinion on China in the age of COVID-19: Political distrust trumps economic opportunities
This report is a result of a wide-scale study of public opinion on China in 13 European countries,1 conducted in September and October 2020, on the research sample representative with respect to gender, age, level of education, country region, and settlement density. Here, we focus on the French portion of the polling, building on the previously published report comparing the results across the 13 countries.
GovTech, The New Frontier in Digital Sovereignty
The COVID-19 crisis has been a catalyst for a surge in the GovTech market, while triggering debate around the use of new technologies in the public health response to the pandemic. More broadly, the health crisis has shed a new light on the strategic importance of some domains relevant to GovTech such as HealthTech, smart cities and EdTech.
The Franco-German Armaments Cooperation. An Impossible Agreement?
In the Aachen Treaty in 2019, Germany and France agree to deepen their "common program in defense matters" and to pursue a common vision in terms of arms export. These are the preconditions that will help consolidate a culture of common armed forces, common interventions, and European defense industry.
The Gabonese Opposition Diaspora in France: A Political Mobilisation in the Context of the 2016 Post-electoral Crisis
The Gabonese opposition diaspora in France has become politically influential. Diasporic actors criticize the Ali Bongo regime and the weak organisation of the Gabonese opposition. They could change the political destiny of the country.
The Karlsruhe Court Judgment: A Thunderclap from a Clear Sky?
In its judgment of 5 May 2020, the German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe questioned the conditions under which the European Central Bank (ECB) had adopted a Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP), thus contradicting the position taken by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the same case.
Macron’s rapprochement with Putin is not worth it
French president’s ‘trust-building’ with Russian leader has failed
Belarus opposition leader takes risky diplomatic path
Once a political novice, Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is joining Europe's diplomatic big leagues but risks undermining her own cause in the process, experts said.
Thirty Years after its Reunification, Germany's “European Moment”?
On October 3, 1990, after forty years of division, Germany once again became one state. Less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 1989, the territories of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) became part of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) under Article 23 of its Basic Law.
Updating the Debate on Turkey in France, on the 2009 European Elections' Time
Turkey has become a recurrent issue in France's domestic political debate, following the referendum campaign on the European Constitutional Treaty in spring 2005. While the question of Turkish EU membership is itself a point of discussion, evoking Turkey also touches on other sensitive political issues in France. It elicits controversy that goes beyond the Left-Right cleavage. In this article, Alain Chenal* studies the trend in the evolution of the debate during the campaign for the European elections in June 2009.
Dorothée Schmid, Head of the Contemporary Turkey Program at the IFRI
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