Sophie Fernandez is a journalist who covered French politics and culture for The Weekly Standard in 2007. Her reporting focused extensively on the French presidential election, tracking the campaigns of Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal, and other candidates, as well as broader social issues in France.
BY ELECTING THE conservative Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday, the French actually chose the candidate promising the most radical change, while rejecting a defender of the status quo in socialist Ségolène Royal. The president-elect, whose 53.2 percent to 46.8 percent margin of victory was more than…
The key moment in Wednesday's French presidential debate came when conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy promised that all handicapped children in France could be integrated into regular schools. Segolene Royal, the Socialist hoping to become France's first female president, went ballistic. It…
plaquechirac2.jpgPalestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas declared last Tuesday that the West Bank city of Ramallah would soon rename one of its biggest thoroughfares after Jacques Chirac, the incumbent French President. Mahmoud Abbas called his French counterpart a "grand homme" on this…
With the first round of the French presidential voting coming up this weekend, Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal keeps dropping in the polls and leftist nerves are fraying. Royal's husband François Hollande, the leader of the Socialist party, has declared in a radio interview with Europe 1 that…
The French presidential elections, already taking place against the backdrop of last year's rioting in the suburbs of Paris, now have a further drama at their heart: the pitched battle yesterday at the Gare du Nord--a combined railway station and subway station in the heart of Paris. It all started…
Bayrou Surges A recent IFOP survey shows that 61 percent of French voters trust neither the left nor the right. This generalized mistrust surely benefits the centrist presidential candidate François Bayrou, the so-called "new man in the middle," but it would be a mistake to explain it as a rebuke…
Le Pen is back! Le Pen.jpgJean-Marie Le Pen, France's ultra-right perennial presidential candidate, managed to obtain the required 500 signatures from local elected officials before March 14, the deadline for presidential hopefuls. He shocked everyone last time around, coming in second on April 21,…
The filming by private persons of acts of violence--crimes, riots, police brutality--has been banned in France. The new measure, sponsored by Nicolas Sarkozy, minister of the interior and a leading candidate for president, is one provision of a juvenile crime law that received final approval from…
Non to citizen journalism France may make citizen journalism on the Internet a risky business, punishing the filming and broadcast of images of violence except by professional journalists. Pending legislation provides for up to five years of prison and a 75,000 Euro fine for someone who, for…