Business life, international news, negotiations at Matignon… All the news of the day can be followed here.
» The main news to follow this Sunday
11:38 – Marine Le Pen refuses responsibility for Michel Barnier’s nomination
The leader of the RN deputies Marine Le Pen denied from Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais) having actively participated in the appointment of Michel Barnier to Matignon: “I am not HRD of Emmanuel Macron and moreover I think that only a Prime Minister of the National Rally can implement the National Rally’s project”, declared Marine Le Pen in front of the press, as she made her return to her stronghold, strolling around the Hénin-Beaumont flea market taking selfies and shaking hands.
Marine Le Pen was questioned about an article in the JDD claiming that the President of the Republic had called her on Thursday to ensure that the RN would not censor the new Prime Minister before his general policy speech, after very critical remarks made by RN MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy. On Thursday, “I did not have any exchange with Emmanuel Macron,” assured Marine Le Pen. “We were received by Emmanuel Macron, we said (…) what were for us the criteria, the conditions that would lead to an immediate non-censorship on the part of the National Rally, of the Prime Minister who would be chosen,” she declared.
Marine Le Pen considered that “it would not be very reasonable to carry out a censorship after the general policy speech (by Michel Barnier), which I think will certainly correspond on a significant number of subjects to the hopes that we have.” But the new government will be “judged on its actions,” she tempered.
10:59 – Sudan does not want an “impartial” intervention force on its soil
Sudanese diplomacy has denounced a recent report by UN experts calling for the deployment of an “impartial” force to protect civilians, describing the Human Rights Council as a “political and illegal body”.
“The Sudanese government rejects in their entirety the recommendations of the UN mission,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement published on Saturday evening, describing them as a “flagrant violation of its mandate.”
Calling for the “immediate deployment” of an “independent and impartial” force to protect civilian populations, UN experts said on Friday that “war crimes and crimes against humanity” had been committed in Sudan.
10:40 a.m. – Deficit: France has requested additional time to send its plan to Brussels
The French government has asked the European Commission for an extension of the deadline for sending its plan to reduce the public deficit, which was initially due by September 20, the Finance Ministry said Saturday evening.
“France has requested such an extension” to “ensure consistency between the plan and the 2025 finance bill,” the Ministry of the Economy told La Tribune on Sunday, without specifying the length of the deadline.
Targeted since the end of July by a European procedure for excessive deficit, like six other EU member states, France must send its plan to Brussels by September 20 to reduce its public deficit until 2027, by which date it should normally have returned below the authorized 3%.
“A return of the deficit below 3% by 2027”, as planned in the multi-year trajectory of public finances transmitted by France to Brussels in the spring, “would require savings of around 110 billion by 2027”, warned the General Directorate of the Treasury in a note dated July.
The President of the Court of Auditors, Pierre Moscovici, also considered this trajectory “outdated”, “having become unlikely and not necessarily desirable”. “To achieve this, we would have to make savings of around a hundred billion euros in three years”, he declared in an interview with Le Parisien published on Saturday.
“It is brutal, it is politically difficult to achieve, socially unacceptable and economically hardly coherent,” he said.
10:20 – Venezuela: Opposition candidate leaves the country for Spain
Former Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez has left his country for Spain just over a month after the disputed election result that officially confirmed Nicolas Maduro in office.
“Edmundo Gonzalez took off from Caracas towards Spain on board a Spanish Air Force plane,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told X, specifying that Madrid was responding to a request from the former candidate. Spain will “naturally” grant political asylum to the opposition candidate in Venezuela, he added.
The Venezuelan opposition says the election ended in a landslide victory for Edmundo Gonzalez and has published online vote tallies that it says show he won.
09:45 – Pedro Almodovar finally crowned, in Venice, with his first American film
The Venice Film Festival has righted an injustice by awarding the 74-year-old Spaniard Pedro Almodovar the Golden Lion, one of the most prestigious prizes of his immense career, for his first American film, “The Room Next Door,” about assisted suicide.
The festival also rewarded the risk-taking of a Hollywood icon, Nicole Kidman, and the work of a figure of French cinema, Vincent Lindon, by awarding them its acting prizes.
09:20 – Photojournalism: Visa d’or News for Palestinian AFP photographer Mahmud Hams
The Visa d’or News, the most prestigious prize at the international photojournalism festival Visa pour l’image, was awarded on Saturday in Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales, south) to Palestinian AFP photographer Mahmud Hams, for his work on the war in Gaza.
The 44-year-old photographer, who has worked for AFP since 2003 in the Palestinian territory, thanked the jury for this prize, describing it as an “honor” encouraging him to continue his work, during a video exchange recorded with Jean-François Leroy, the founding director of Visa pour l’image, and broadcast during the presentation of the prize list.