Surprise dissolution of the National Assembly, enchanted parenthesis of the Olympics, explosion of the Mazan rape trial: a look back at the significant events of the year 2024 in France.
Agricultural anger
On January 29, hundreds of farmers converged on Paris to block access. At the forefront of peasant unease are the low agricultural prices and the burden of environmental standards.
Newly appointed to replace Elisabeth Borne, Gabriel Attal, the youngest French Prime Minister, is trying to put out the fire by increasing the number of announcements.
But the movement is spreading in Europe. The European Commission ends up proposing to drastically reduce the environmental rules of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Proposal adopted on March 26.
In the fall, agricultural anger resurfaced: this time the protests focused on the future free trade agreement between the EU and the five Latin American countries of Mercosur. Negotiations were concluded on December 6 by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, but the agreement still needs to be ratified by EU member countries.
#MeToo cinema
After having publicly accused the filmmaker Benoît Jacquot of rape then Jacques Doillon of sexual assault for facts dating back to his adolescence, the actress Judith Godrèche demanded, on February 29 before the Senate, the establishment of a commission of inquiry on sexual and gender-based violence in cinema.
Having become the incarnation of #MeToo cinema, she describes the 7th art as “a family where we cannot denounce, where we do not know who to talk to”. Two commissions of inquiry, one on sexual violence in cinema and audiovisual, the other on child protection, were created in May at the National Assembly.
Accused of sexual assault on the set of “Volets vertes” in 2021, Gérard Depardieu was placed in police custody in April. His trial scheduled for October has been postponed until March 2025 for health reasons.
Director Christophe Ruggia, accused by actress Adèle Haenel, another figure of the French #Metoo, of sexual assault when she was between 12 and 14 years old, is on trial in December in Paris. Five years in prison, including two years, are required against him. The court will deliver its decision on February 3.
Abortion engraved in the constitution
On March 4, France became the first country to explicitly include voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) in its Constitution.
Deputies and senators, meeting in Congress at the Palace of Versailles, approve by 92% the modification of article 34 which now stipulates: “The law determines the conditions under which the freedom guaranteed to a woman to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy is exercised.”
Violence in New Caledonia and Martinique
Vehicles burned, businesses looted, roadblocks erected: the night of May 13 to 14 marks the start of several months of violence in New Caledonia against an electoral reform project, rejected by the separatists, which will leave 14 dead and at least two billion euros of damage. This project, first suspended in June, was abandoned on October 1 by the new Prime Minister Michel Barnier.
In Martinique, a mobilization against the high cost of living also led to violence from September. On October 16, the state signed an agreement to reduce the prices of 6,000 food products by 20%. But this agreement was “suspended” in December due to censorship from Michel Barnier’s government.
Dissolution surprise
On the evening of June 9, while the National Rally (RN) came out well ahead of the European elections, Emmanuel Macron took the country by surprise by announcing the dissolution of the National Assembly.
After an express campaign marked by the unexpected regrouping of the left under the New Popular Front (NFP) banner and by a violent internal crisis among Les Républicains (LR, right), the far right remains at the gates of power, hampered by withdrawals electoral disputes between the left and the presidential camp to block the RN. The political landscape appears more fragmented than ever with three political blocs and no majority.
We have to wait almost two months for Emmanuel Macron to appoint former European Commissioner Michel Barnier as Prime Minister.
The fruit of a fragile team between Macronists and LR, his government did not resist, on December 4, a motion of censure tabled by the left and benefiting from the votes of the National Rally. Just three months after his appointment, Michel Barnier must leave Matignon.
On December 13, Emmanuel Macron appointed as Prime Minister the president of Modem, François Bayrou, with the heavy task of forming an executive capable of resisting censorship while a “special law” was adopted allowing the State to lift the tax while waiting for the vote on the 2025 budget, stopped by the fall of the Barnier government.
Abbé Pierre, fallen icon
A tireless defender of the homeless, Abbé Pierre is accused by several women of sexual assault, according to a report released on July 17 by the associations which perpetuate his work.
New round of revelations in September: at least 17 other women, sometimes minors at the time of the events, accuse of sexual violence the man who was for a long time the favorite personality of the French.
The Abbé-Pierre Foundation decides to change its name and Emmaüs to close a place of memory dedicated to the priest, who died in 2007.
Olympic Games, the enchanted parenthesis
A crazy parade on the Seine, closed in apotheosis by the star Céline Dion singing the Hymn to Love from the Eiffel Tower, gives, on July 26, the start to two radiant weeks of Olympic competitions in Paris.
Postcard-like sites, such as beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower, horseback riding at the Palace of Versailles or cycling through Montmartre, and a no-nonsense organization that attracts the praise of the world press act for French as an enchanted parenthesis in a troubled and uncertain political and economic period.
The magic will continue until September 8 and the end of the Paralympic Games, which will also experience rare enthusiasm.
The Olympic Games, a financial pit for France?
It was in front of 200,000 people that the Olympic flame arrived on Wednesday (May 8) in Marseille, a few weeks before the opening of the Olympic and Paralympic Games which will take place from July 26 to September 8. But what will be the economic benefits of the competition for France?
Shock of the Mazan rape trial
On September 2, the Mazan rape trial opens in Avignon (Vaucluse): Dominique Pelicot and 50 men accused of having raped, over ten years, his ex-wife whom he drugged without her knowledge.
The victim, Gisèle Pelicot, insists that the trial not be held behind closed doors: “Shame is not ours to have, it’s theirs,” she says in court.
She became a feminist heroine, was greeted with guards of honor and bouquets of flowers on her arrival at court, and was celebrated abroad as “the new icon of France”.
The trial, followed by dozens of media outlets outside France, has worldwide impact. The case sparks an important social debate on the notions of consent, “rape culture” and “chemical submission”
Dominique Pelicot was sentenced, on December 19, to the maximum penalty of 20 years of criminal imprisonment and all of his co-defendants were declared guilty by the Vaucluse criminal court. The main accused does not rule out appealing.
Starting the EPR
With 12 years behind the initial schedule and a bill four times higher than expected, the Flamanville EPR (Manche) begins operating on September 3 with the achievement of the first nuclear fission in its core.
This new generation power plant is the first nuclear reactor built in France in 22 years. The state plans to build six more EPRs.
Serial floods
The year 2024 is marked by a string of floods and floods, natural phenomena accentuated by global warming.
In January and February, torrential rains cause the watercourses of Pas-de-Calais and Nord to overflow for a very long time. In April and May, it is the turn of the Yonne basin then rivers in Moselle, Bas-Rhin, Mayenne, Maine-et-Loire to burst their banks.
In September, the sanctuary of Lourdes (Hautes-Pyrénées) and the Aspe valley (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) are hit by express floods.
In October, the Kirk depression then a Cévennes episode caused numerous floods. The Ardèche department is particularly affected by this latest episode, the cost of which is estimated between 350 and 420 million euros by the Central Reinsurance Fund (CCR).
Burst social plans
Losing momentum and over-indebted, the large distribution group Casino is offloading almost all of its large format stores and presents in April a major social plan providing for up to 3,200 job cuts.
Also in a difficult situation, its competitor Auchan announced, on November 5, a weight loss cure and a social plan which threatened 2,400 jobs in France while the tire giant Michelin announced the closure of two factories, in Cholet (Maine). et-Loire) and Vannes (Morbihan), with a total of 1,254 employees.
In December, the CGT counted more than 300 social plans in France and 300,000 jobs threatened or already eliminated. In the list of companies concerned, the satellite branch of Airbus, Canal+ and Crédit commercial de France (CCF).
Reopening of Notre-Dame
Five years and eight months after a devastating fire that stunned millions of people around the world, Notre-Dame Cathedral reopens its doors on December 7, during a ceremony in the presence of American President-elect Donald Trump and the Ukrainian President. Volodymyr Zelensky. A first mass is celebrated there on Sunday 8.
The Gothic emblem of Paris regains its frames and its spire, reconstructed identically, the original blondness of its stone and the unique sound of its great organ which had survived the blaze of April 15, 2019. Financed exclusively by donations , This “construction site of the century” cost nearly 700 million euros and mobilized 2,000 professionals.
Devastated Mayotte
On December 14, a powerful cyclone, with gusts of more than 220 km/h, devastated Mayotte, the poorest of the French departments, located in the Indian Ocean.
This overseas territory, which was already facing many ills, chief among them poverty, precarious housing and insecurity, is completely devastated. The slums, where a third of the 320,000 inhabitants of this archipelago lived, were pulverized. Emmanuel Macron promises to “rebuild” Mayotte.
A provisional report on December 19 showed around thirty deaths and 1,400 injured. But the authorities fear a much heavier toll, with 70% of residents having been seriously affected.
