Just a decade ago, the international geopolitical landscape still resembled the one shaped during the Cold War. Today, however, global power dynamics are in flux: erstwhile enemies are cozying up to each other, former friends have fallen out, and countries previously overlooked are asserting greater influence.

It’s a particularly unstable time for Europe, which is struggling with a rise in far-right political parties across the continent, as well as the fallout from wars in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf. It is also grappling with the overriding questions: when will things settle down and what will this new order look like?

Mark Leonard, co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, believes it’s too early to ask. “I don’t think that we’re going to see a new order emerge soon,” he says. “I think what we’re going to have is much, much more disruption.”

^{Mark Leonard, author and co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, talks with RFP Deputy Editor Elaine Cobbe}

Global Disruption

Leonard is the author of a new book, Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail. He predicts that “disruption” will generate global disorder for the next few decades…

He thinks we are currently in a situation where there is no balance of power: “There’s no agreement on what the rules are. To say that the Iran war is illegal is just not an argument that has any weight in the American or the Israeli political system. And if you look at what Iran’s doing, you know, its response was to attack countries that were belligerents, like Israel, and the UAE, co-belligerents, and then equally attack countries like Oman, which had absolutely nothing to do with it and were acting as brokers between them.”

Talking to journalists from the Anglo-American Press Association in Paris, Leonard said he believes the old order has broken down so quickly that it would be very difficult today to replicate the kind of international co-operation that galvanized the world during the Covid pandemic or the united opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

France: International Coordination Needed

Speaking at the European Political Community Summit in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, this month, French President Emmanuel Macron shared that perspective, citing the importance of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the European Union.

Referring to the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February, where the United Nations was not consulted and allies weren’t even informed, Macron warned: “No peace can be negotiated in any office if it’s based on the idea of ‘might makes right.’”

France has been placing itself at the forefront of EU diplomacy, in an effort to retain Europe’s status on the world stage. The other half of Europe’s power couple, Germany, was absent from the early reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, as it was preoccupied with domestic politics. However, Germany, too, is now keen to signal that it’s back. Chancellor Friedrich Merz was harshly critical of the attacks on Iran – and the US Secretary of Defense responded promptly by threatening to withdraw 5,000 US troops stationed at bases in Germany.

Leonard believes that France may have a harder time than some other countries in coming to terms with these shifts in its relevance. “France has realized for a long time that the only way it could have a seat at the global table – and be important as its relative economic and military power decline – was through Europe,” he says. “And that’s a lesson it has to learn again.”

Consequently, he feels that President Macron is taking the right approach: trying to persuade the French that sovereignty is best preserved by supporting a more united Europe, rather than considering Europe a threat to sovereignty, as the French far right has suggested.

“I think we should be focused on what we can control and what we can do,” Leonard adds, admitting that may be a bigger challenge for France, given that universalism is so much part of the French system. He would like to see France move from that view “to more of a kind of exceptionalism, where we understand that we built something really wonderful and special in Europe, but it is under threat.”

UK: Drawing Closer to EU?

If the European Union has been struggling to understand its evolving relationship with the US for several years, the UK has only recently begun to accept that its “special relationship” with the US is simply not what it used to be. Leonard believes that the growing realization in London that it can no longer rely on the US in the same way has been narrowing the massive rift caused by Brexit, drawing Britain closer to the EU.

“Trump’s ‘second coming’ has just blown apart Britain’s ideas of how it plays a role on the global stage,” he says. “The fact that Britain wasn’t remotely consulted before the Iran war, the fact that the deals they thought they had over the Chagos Islands [Indian Ocean] get, kind of, ripped up, the abuse which Trump levels at British leaders on a daily basis…”

On the defense front, not everyone believes that the Atlantic alliance is finished, no matter how strained relations have become under the Trump administration.

“Europe needs the United States for now, even a transactional United States, even one that has changed the terms,” argue Jackson Janes and Markus Ziener of the German Marshall Fund. Writing in the Just Security newsletter of the non-partisan think tank, they add: “Managing that dependency intelligently is not appeasement, it is realism. It means paying the subscription fee while simultaneously working to renegotiate it from a position of growing strength.”

Trade Bazooka Against China?

Leonard is also concerned about China’s increasing global dominance and warns that Europe is particularly vulnerable to “economic coercion” from Beijing. He would like to see tougher controls and the use of the EU’s anti-coercion “bazooka”, including across-the-board tariffs on Chinese imports to Europe.

He believes that China is better prepared than Europe for this period of disorder. “China thinks that we’re entering a series of changes as profound as the industrial revolution,” he says. “But their hope is that this time they’re going to be on the right side of these changes, and that this could be the beginning of the West’s or Europe’s century of humiliation.”

Leonard argues that the Chinese have a different way of thinking about order – adapting to the world rather than trying to control it – and he would like to see Europeans follow suit.

Closer integration within Europe can help the Old World survive the chaos, he suggests: “I think the European Union is an enormous asset for everybody in this kind of dangerous world where the global rules have disappeared, but where we can still have rules on our continent, and we should entrench them and make them more legitimate and more effective.”

That may require a double think, he says: “You need to have one way of thinking about what happens within our space, and another way of thinking about what happens outside our space.”

Elaine Cobbe is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist based in Paris. A former foreign correspondent with CBS News, she has covered many of the major international stories of the past three decades, including the conflicts in Iraq, Kosovo, and Rwanda, and terror attacks in Paris, Brussels, and Barcelona. A regular commentator on French and international politics for news outlets in France and her native Ireland, she is also a researcher and trainer in journalism and trauma. Elaine is a committee member of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.

One of the dangers of contemporary hard-power nationalism is that it carries significant consequences beyond national borders. An increasing number of authoritarian regimes are pursuing policies that spark new wars, violent conflicts, and global chaos. As international democracy weakened over the past decade, news reports suggest the number of wars doubled.

It would be reasonable for democratic governments, in these turbulent times, to increase spending on diplomacy, peacekeeping, and aid work. Instead, the opposite is happening.

Fallacy of Hard Power

During the first Trump administration, Jim Mattis, then US Secretary of Defense, warned that gutting diplomacy and aid means that “even more will have to be spent on ammunition.” In short, every dollar saved on aid and diplomacy will be spent on new wars.

Mattis is proven right as nationalist governments gut global aid and curb diplomatic efforts, peacekeeping, and democracy-promoting initiatives, citing “domestic pressures,” while doing so creates humanitarian crises that increase the risk of new conflicts.

The British medical journal The Lancet estimates that millions will die as a result of Donald Trump’s gutting of USAID, one of the world’s largest national aid programs. The war in Iran has caused a new spike in oil prices, resulting in broader inflation and the threat of global recession – potentially triggering additional wars.

Europe Imitates Trump

It’s not just Washington; across Europe’s wealthy nations, similar cuts are happening. Recently, the acting head of the UN’s World Food Programme, Carl Skau, traveled through Europe meeting with EU leaders to underscore the importance of continuing their own global aid at a time when an increasing number of European governments are following Trump’s lead. In Paris, following his visits to dozens of crisis zones, including Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, Haiti, Jamaica, and Ukraine, Skau spoke to the Anglo-American Press Association, relating stories of decreased staffing levels, depleted funds, and serious food shortages leading to a “perfect storm of humanitarian crises.”

The humanitarian arguments should be enough to convince governments to support diplomacy and aid work, but since they clearly have been insufficient, it is worth reminding governments that it is self-harm for democratic countries to cut diplomacy, aid, and global outreach during periods of increasing war and conflict. “A hungry world is an unstable world,” Skau says.

In hard times like the present, amplified by conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, it is tempting to view the entire arsenal of soft power as an unaffordable luxury. But Trump’s overall foreign policy reveals the flaws in a doctrine shaped by the idea that raw strength and hard power are all that matter.

“You can’t shoot values,” said Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, in a widely publicized speech in Germany, in early 2025. He meant that values and ideas cannot be used as ammunition, which makes them useless. But the statement had the opposite effect of what he intended.

There are No Real Winners in a Global Retreat from Soft Power

Only a year later, Trump struggled to find a single European government to support the US-Israel attack on Iran. A country perceived to be a bully rather than a reliable partner quickly loses its friends, making it significantly harder to manage setbacks and crises or ensure a stable future. Suddenly, values, trust, diplomacy, and relationship-building – soft power – do not seem so worthless.

At this precise moment, with a new world order emerging, to withdraw from global commitments and diplomatic obligations is strategically shortsighted. Such a retreat leaves the door wide open for autocratic regimes – be it China or the wealthy Gulf states – to step forward to fill the void in global leadership and cultural influence left by the US.

“There are no real winners in a global retreat from soft power. Not the United States. Not its allies. Not even its competitors,” writes Vivian Walker, PhD, an American diplomat and adjunct professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. “A world in which strategies of persuasion are eclipsed by an over-reliance on threat and aggression is a world that is more volatile, less predictable, and ultimately less secure for all.”

Brute Force May Work – Until it Doesn’t

It’s wishful thinking to believe that idealism alone will motivate countries to do good. Twelve years ago, one of the leading thinkers on public diplomacy, Simon Anholt, launched The Good Country Index, a new way to measure a country’s positive influence across the globe. Anholt advocated for relationship-building and aid, not just because it is good for humanity, but also because it promotes the core mission of every competent government: the security of its domestic population.

“The US didn’t spend billions on aid for Germany, Japan, and Italy after the [Second World War] because they were so ‘good.’ They did it because it was good for them,” Anholt said at the time.

He developed a motto that he tried, with mixed success, to get various governments to implement: “In order to do well, you need to do good.” The point is that countries wishing to create prosperity and security must also help others.

For middle powers, such as France, Canada, the UK, Japan, or South Korea, relationship-building and soft power only become more important in hard times.

For major global powers, such as America and China, a doctrine of brute force may work – until it doesn’t. Trump’s isolation on the foreign stage vividly illustrates this: what made America so powerful in the last century were not just domestic strengths but foreign allies.

Martin Gelin worked as a US correspondent for European media for two decades and moved to Paris in 2024. He writes regularly for Dagens Nyheter and The Guardian, and lectures globally on soft power and geopolitics. His new book, Rules of Attraction: Why Soft Power Matters in Hard Times, will be published in more than 20 countries in 2027. He is President of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.

Some of it was elegant, some of it tacky. None of it was dull.

It Started with Henri II

Auction houses in France have a quirky history. For centuries, only French ones were allowed to operate in that country, thanks to a royal edict passed by Henri II in 1556. Besides infuriating foreign competitors, this had a negative impact on both the French economy and patrimony, as some objets d’art were sold abroad where they tended to fetch higher prices.

This monopoly remained in force until 1998, when it succumbed to pressure from the European Union and the firms Sotheby’s, Phillips, and Christie’s, the latter of which is currently owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François Pinault. Three years later, in 2001, Sotheby’s held its first public auction in France.

I returned to the auctions for a second time recently to see what was what… and to find out who would shop there. First stop: Sotheby’s, where I focused on jewelry – that most frivolous of indulgences.

There was so much to gape at! The waiting room and public spaces were glossy, minimal, shiny, and chic.

I’d forgotten how thrilling a live auction can be, from the moment a person fixes upon something they just have to own, to the actual sale itself, which typically takes place a day or two later.

For me, the experience brought a dose of nostalgia along with it. My father was an independent art dealer, based in London, and I vividly recall the chilly formality of the first of many auctions he brought me to, that one held at Phillips Son & Neale (now called Phillips) in New Bond Street. Needless to say, I was the only teenager in attendance.

The audience there was almost exclusively male. Some, I kid you not, arrived wearing bowler hats, which they placed on their laps for the duration of the sale. The auctioneer, standing at a podium before us, called out in a rapid, clipped patois. At one point, my father nodded curtly, the man at the head of the room took notice, and yet another painting, likely destined to be resold, joined our family.

Under the Gavel at Sotheby’s

Decades later, in the auction rooms of Sotheby’s Paris, the atmosphere is crisp. Guards stand in the background as photos of the jewels, ranging from a diamond-encrusted brooch of purple sapphires to a pearl necklace with a star motif, flash onto screens on either side of the room. Bids are listed, too, most clicking higher and higher.

To my surprise, I am one of only five people actually seated in the auction room; a few other potential bidders hover at its periphery. If the number of real humans is vanishingly small, the number of virtual ones seems outsized. Bids, pouring in via telephone or the internet, are tallied by Sotheby’s employees seated at long tables to the side of the room.

The auctioneer (commissaire-priseuse), likely in her early forties, wears a stunning diamond necklace that I suspect isn’t hers. She moves with great confidence. “It’s against you; it’s actually in my book,” she says, courteously advising one man that his is no longer the upper bid. She brings down her gavel decisively, after calling out “No regrets” or “Quelques minutes de réflexion,” to give bidders time to think it over before the item they covet – a ring set with a foiled-back antique rose-cut diamond, perhaps? – is decisively theirs. (That bauble sells for €13,000.) There’s no backing out in auctions.

The elegance of Sotheby’s is inspiring. It isn’t just the look of the place but how seamlessly it all moves. Even the empty minimalism of the auction seems chic.

Democratic Drouot

A day or so later, I make my way to the 174-year-old Hôtel Drouot – the very epicenter of the Paris auction scene. It’s impossible not to find the place. It’s in my face, in one form or another, from the moment I emerge from the Richelieu-Drouot metro station. There’s a Café Drouot across the way and two storefront art appraisers nearby, including one affiliated with the auction house itself.

The current Drouot building, designed by architects Jean-Jacques Fernier and André Biro, dates to 1980. It replaced the original, 19^th-century structure, even recycling some of its metal components. Today, some 70 independent auction houses, selling more or less everything, operate there under the Drouot name.

My first impression of its viewing rooms is how everyone seems to be on the hunt – crossing the room taking notes, zeroing in on what they want to buy. There is a competitive feeling to it all, some sharp elbows among the connoisseurs.

Compared with Sotheby’s, there’s an appealingly non-elite, everyman nature to Drouot. It’s almost Balzacian, with people from all walks of life wandering its halls. There is less poetry in the auctioneering, too: no one on the Drouot staff has put on a diamond necklace for the occasion.

Still, both auction houses play by the same script. Drouot’s young commissaire-priseur speaks of one Marcial Berro coral and crystal necklace as being part of an “exceptional collection” by that designer. And he calls out a decisive “Dernière chance,” before banging down his gavel.

Why I am Sold

Visiting both sales was heartening to me. The atmosphere was welcoming, even casual. There wasn’t a bowler hat in sight and, presumably, even a young teenager would be welcome.

For those who’ve felt intimidated by the auction scene – don’t be. It’s uniquely entertaining and attendance is free. Go there for the fun of it, and even to shop.

• Sotheby’s Paris, 83 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris. Tel: +33 (0)1 53 05 53 05

• L’Hôtel Drouot, 9 Rue Drouot, 75009 Paris. Tel: +33 (0)1 48 00 20 00

Penelope Rowlands is an essayist, journalist, and the author of six books, including the biography, A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and her Life in Fashion, Art, and Letters and an anthology, Paris Was Ours, which is now in its 16th printing. She is a member of the Anglo American Press Association of Paris. Penelope on LinkedIn.

More than half of the world’s countries now fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom, according to the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the leading international non-profit organization in the defence and promotion of freedom of information.

In its ranking of 180 nations, the new Index shows that the expansion of increasingly restrictive legal arsenals – particularly those linked to national security policies – has been steadily eroding the right to information, even in democratic countries, with the average score dropping to its lowest point since the survey began in 2001. Click here to read the full report.

Norway comes out on top and Eritrea has the worst record. Ireland leads the anglophone nations in 7th place, the UK is 18th, and the US trails in 64th place, a drop of seven places.

“We started the school in 2020 with a class of 40 students in response to requests from young women who didn’t want to be forced into child marriage,” says Ziervogel, co-founder and CEO of Alsama. The name means “sky” in Arabic.

Most are refugees from neighboring Syria, birthplace of Alsama co-founder Kadria Hussien, herself a refugee from that country’s civil war. She has been working with young refugees in Lebanon since 2018. That’s when Ziervogel and her husband decided to up stakes in Europe and join her effort.

“Kadria was married at 14 and had her first child at 16,” Ziervogel explains. “Her first aim was to provide basic education for girls [in similar situations], but the girls wanted more than just literacy and soon boys also began asking for schooling. They told us: ‘You can’t empower girls if you don’t empower us.’”

Building Brighter Futures

Today, Alsama teaches 1,200 students, mostly Syrians with some Lebanese and Palestinians; roughly 50:50 boys and girls, aged 11 to 18. Another 1,000 youngsters are on a waiting list. The school now has five centers, including one just opened in Homs, western Syria, in May. Alsama is registered in Lebanon and Syria as an NGO charity rather than a school. The annual $2.2 million budget is funded by donations rather than government funds.

The school’s curriculum was created by the teachers and students themselves. Students are accepted (or not) into universities via the G12++ exam designed for displaced youth (Ziervogel calls it “a curriculum-agnostic exam any student can take”) and launched in February 2026. The centers are accredited with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).

At the start, however, the education can be pretty basic. “Almost 90 percent of the children arrive without being able to read or write in their native language,” says Ziervogel. “Others might read at a second-grade level at age 14.” Students learn to read and write in their native language and English. Starting in the second year, all classes are taught in English. By the time they graduate, students can function in both their native tongue and English as well.

France spent €6-8 billion directly on refugees and asylum seekers from 2022-2024; in 2024 alone, total spending on refugees/asylum programs amounted to €2-3+ billion. In 2025, France’s refugee budget was cut by about €69 million, with programs such as AGIR (refugee integration support) being most affected.

But parents proved to be less than accepting of their children getting an education, as classes conflict with the local, traditional societal roles for boys and girls. “We teach parental diplomacy,” says Ziervogel, “so students can show their parents that education gives them tools to make their lives better. For example, learning math so Mom can’t be cheated at the market. And there is a kind of family pride when one of the children can speak English.”

Lessons Beyond Books

And then there’s sport: co-ed cricket, set up by Ziervogel’s British husband, Richard Verity, a cricket fanatic who founded a club in the Shatila camp as soon as the couple arrived in Lebanon in 2018. Today, Alsama Cricket is the largest refugee youth-cricket program in the Middle East. But why cricket?

“It’s not a violent sport,” says Ziervogel. “There’s no physical contact, so boys and girls can play together. It’s complicated, so you learn to play by the rules. It’s an international sport, so all types of people play it. And the girls actually play better than boys at ages 12 to13, so boys learn to respect them!”

There’s also some life advice – such as urging students to wait until they’ve finished their education, find a job, and then complete the proper paperwork before heading to foreign shores, where, as undocumented immigrants, they could face harsh punishments and deportation. “European countries are overwhelmed today,” says Ziervogel. “They just are not able to integrate everyone who wants to go there.” There’s also the hope that these students will eventually return to the region a few years after graduation to play a role in their country’s development.

Courage in Face of Adversity

But, meanwhile, hostilities in the Persian Gulf continue, and classes go on in the midst of it all, in the same camps where Palestinian refugees first huddled in 1948 and 1949, and faced massacres by Lebanese forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

“We’ve been through this before,” says Ziervogel, referring to Israeli bombings in 2024. “So, we know what to do. Each war makes us stronger. We can pivot.” When there’s no internet, classes are held via WhatsApp. “The students want to continue classes,” she says. “Their fear of losing classes is much bigger than their fear of war.”

However, as the war continues, residents are beginning to leave southern Lebanon to seek refuge in the north, and Ziervogel is looking to open new education centers in the region. She herself is staying on, despite continued hostilities.

“Friends and family wanted me to leave this year during the Beirut bombing,” she recalls. “But I refused. We operate in the Middle East. We must think of education in the long term, not as a six-month project. If I, as CEO, were to leave, what kind of message would that send?”

Shellie Karabell has spent more than 40 years in broadcast journalism as a news executive, anchor, producer, and field reporter in her native USA, Europe, the USSR/Russia and the Middle East for ABC/WTN, PBS, Dow Jones Broadcast, CNBC, and Forbes.com. She has covered some of the major news events of the 20^th century: the release of the American hostages from Iran in 1981; the collapse of the Berlin Wall (1989); civil wars in Lebanon (1983) and Yugoslavia (1991-92), and USSR/Russia (1986- present). She is currently VP of the Anglo American Press Association of Paris (President 2022-2025).

What’s More Important than a Flatbed in Flight?

An arbitrary ranking of the best airline experience is easy to find.

My ranking is arbitrary, too, but it’s a ranking of something different and more interesting: airline experiences that are the most beautiful and pleasing on the eye. Airline as art, as it were.

Food and wine – culinary art – is one differentiator, but frankly there’s only so much one can do with this on a plane. The art of service can be a big differentiator as well, of course, especially in the economy cabin.

But in the first-class premium cabins, in addition to providing the best functionality (and almost all airlines now provide more than the basics – think flatbed), the key differentiator has to be the experience: how the product makes one feel – its design, its aesthetic, its capacity for making the heart sing.

Here are my top five:

Air France New La Première on the Boeing 777-300

The old La Première/first class was pretty darn amazing, but this takes commercial flying to a new level of beauty – the color palette, the clean lines, the five-window-length, the lack of try-hardness, the curtains (ooh, the curtains)... It’s like sitting inside a work of art. Add to that the extraordinary ground service, especially at Charles de Gaulle Airport (there are actual hotel suites in the lounge).

Singapore Airlines Suites on the Airbus A380

Honestly, I am not spectacularly keen on the shades-of-brown color scheme, but everything else is pretty staggering – from the fact that this is a whole room (with separate leather chair and bed) to the way you can put two “rooms” together to create a double bed, and from the beauty of the carved suite doors to the people serving you. The product is now almost ten years old but it’s still a masterpiece.

British Airways “Old” First Class on the Boeing 747-400

BA was the first to introduce a flatbed on any aircraft in the mid-90s. It was an instant design classic and, even while Concorde was still flying, felt like the best of aviation. This product was replaced around the turn of the last decade by something that initially seemed like an upgrade – more privacy, more tech, a more brooding aesthetic, on more modern aircraft – but increasingly, in retrospect, seems like an error. Anyone who flew in the original light-brown shell with the grey herringbone seat will still remember it – gorgeous, elite, extraordinary.

Cathay Pacific Aria Suite (Business Class) on the Boeing 777-300

In some ways, one could argue that there is nothing much that’s special about this – a business class flatbed, a herringbone formation, a suite door that closes for privacy... But this seat, this cabin, this experience is so beautiful: the color palette is astonishingly lush, the tech top notch (you can discern which lavatories are occupied on your IFE screen), and even the toilets themselves are a work of art. Cathay had a few lean years – especially during Covid – but this is a spectacular return to glory.

Emirates Showers in First Class on the Airbus A380

Unlike many, I am no big fan of the Middle Eastern airlines’ premium cabins. They all tend to look like a slice of Trump’s New York penthouse and the products can be unpredictable at best. But it would be remiss to create a list like this without mentioning the wonder that is Emirates’ showers on the A380. For one, it’s a shower on an aircraft (there are two on each plane), and far from being a gimmick, they actually do make one feel really good getting off a flight. Furthermore, the showers are gloriously beautiful – with heated floors no less. I kind of hate to say it but they are total genius.

Safe travels.

Under the Meanderer’s Mask…

After several years of journalistic inactivity, the globe-trotting, highly discriminating Masked Meanderer was coaxed back into action by the Reporting from Paris team to share his thoughts, observations, and advice on travel on a regular basis. Abandoning journalism to become a successful entrepreneur, he enjoys his journeys and pays for his own tickets.

Where was Henri IV assassinated on May 14, 1610?

ANSWER

From Connaissez-vous Paris? (Do You know Paris?) by Raymond Queneau, present edition published by Editions Gallimard, 2011.

What is a flâneuse?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a flâneuse (or flâneur if a man) is someone who “walks around not doing anything in particular but watching people and society.”

It’s hard to be neutral about this dynamic, determined, and internationally recognized former labor inspector, who was even the centerpiece of a TIME magazine feature in 2024.

Her supporters laud the plethora of bike lanes and greenery in what was once a car-polluted, asphalt capital.

Her detractors decry “an urban wasteland,” where traditional park benches were replaced with slabs of wood that rotted in the rain, and citizen gardeners were allowed to ‘privatize’ trees in the streets to create urban gardens that quickly turned into weeds. Paris cemeteries were also encouraged to promote biodiversity.

In 2021, an irate citizen created “#SaccageParis” (which can be loosely translated as “Trashed Paris”), an online movement that no doubt contributed to the withdrawal of several unpopular initiatives.

Mayor with a Mission

When Hidalgo became Mayor in 2014, Paris was a very different city. Cars were legion, dominating now-pedestrianized areas and occupying parking places that have since been repurposed. Dedicated lanes for cyclists were rare and, aside from the capital’s famed parks, so were green spaces.

Hidalgo’s plan was simple: transform polluted, car-engorged Paris into an urban paradise of greenery where Parisians could ride their bicycles, breathe fresh air, and even swim in the Seine. True to her word, a 1.4-billion-euro clean-up was launched before the Olympic Games. Some athletes fell ill but it was never clearly linked to the Seine waters. The good news is that no one died.

^{Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo kept her pledge to swim in the Seine ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games [video © Le Monde]}

Cars Out, Bikes In, Pedestrians in Peril

Speed limits on the périphérique (ring road) were lowered, designated areas for limited- or no-traffic sprang up (despite protests from some shopkeepers), and streetside parking places were converted to spaces for bikes or mini gardens. In short, Hidalgo got her way: even diehards like my Parisian sister-in-law, who claimed she had never taken a bus or metro in her life, surrendered.

^{Pedestrians and bicyclists weave their ways crossing rue St Antoine in the Marais district [video © Shellie Karabell]}

But by putting drivers on bicycles, Hidalgo managed to put pedestrians at risk in her game of change. Crossing the street has become a game of chicken, with those on foot having to dodge hordes of cyclists who blithely ignore traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, and other rules of the road designed to keep accidents to a minimum. (Cyclists, meanwhile, complain about a lack of respect for cycle lanes).

Change for the Sake of Change?

Still, other changes were clearly a case of “good intentions paving the road to hell.” Take those charming 19^th-century-style newspaper kiosks with their domes and friezes: 360 were dismantled, purportedly for the good of the vendors who would gain amenities such as heating and toilets. Maybe some did, but not all.

I recently interviewed a couple of vendors in their “new” quarters. When I asked one if he was more comfortable now, he burst out laughing and tapped on the flimsy wall behind him. “No heating in here, no toilet. Those metal plaques would go down in a minute,” he scoffed. “De la m---e.”

When All is Said and Done

So, what is Hidalgo’s legacy? On the positive side, she turned the car-clogged banks of the Seine into a haven for pedestrians, joggers, and cyclists, and decreased traffic significantly across the city (according to this recent report in Time Out, it fell by half between 2002 and 2023). Apparently, air pollution has decreased substantially, too, though some days it’s hard to tell. There are now many more places to sit amidst trees and cool off.

On the negative side, Paris is still not exactly what you would call a “clean city.” Parisians compete with bicycles for right-of-way at pedestrian crossings and regret the traditional landmarks that were whisked away in the name of modernity. Some hope that her successor, Emmanuel Grégoire, also a Socialist, will continue her policies. The ones who didn’t vote for him pray that he won’t.

Harriet Welty Rochefort grew up in the American Midwest, came to France via freighter after college, and stayed. A freelance journalist, professor of journalism and author of several books about Franco-American cultural differences, she lives in Paris with her French husband, Philippe. She is a member of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris. You can find her writing on Substack at harrietinparis.substack.com

The French may have a lot of time off, but it takes skill and strategic planning to slalom between work and play in a land where national law enshrines a 35-hour work week and five weeks of annual leave.

And then there’s the merry month of May, which this year hosts four of France’s 11 public holidays.

One Month, Four Holidays

To begin with, May 1^st is Labor Day, a day off to celebrate workers’ rights. Traditionally, workplaces are closed, labor unions hold protest marches, and members of the Communist Party – among other organizations and individuals – raise funds by selling little bouquets of Lily of the Valley. Ironically, this gifting tradition can be traced back to King Charles IX who began offering them to ladies at his court in the 16^th century.

But some want to work on Labor Day, especially if by choice and at twice the pay. Last year, a handful of independent bakers and florists remained open on Labor Day; 22 bakers were fined by the authorities. That triggered an as-yet unresolved national debate, allowing them to open in legal limbo this year. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu promised all would be resolved by May 1^st, 2027.

Next in the calendar of public holidays, May 8^th marks the end of World War II in Europe. To honor the occasion, among other events, there is a commemoration ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe where the President of the Republic lays a wreath and rekindles the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Then there’s Ascension Thursday, a religious public holiday, which falls on May 14^th this year. This sees many people take the Friday off to make a ‘pont’ (bridge), creating a four-day weekend. Teachers at schools holding classes the following Friday and Saturday expect a flood of notes excusing student absences due to “illness.”

Finally, the Monday after Pentecost (Whit Monday), on May 25^th this time, is another religious holiday. For a while, this one was effectively suspended in favor of the ‘Journée de Solidarité’ (Day of Solidarity). Following the summer heatwave of 2003, which killed nearly 15,000 mainly elderly people, the idea was to use employees’ wages from that day for the benefit of senior citizens and those with disabilities. However, from 2008, the holiday was officially reinstated, and it was decided that the Day of Solidarity need not necessarily take place on Whit Monday.

Importance of Planning Ahead

In any event, good luck booking a last-minute getaway. Parisians make their plans months – even a year – in advance.

After friends visited us last summer, they invited us to their home near the seaside town of Arcachon in the southwest for this Ascension Thursday ‘pont.’ We immediately noted the weekend of May 14^th to 17^th in our 2026 diaries.

Like most Parisians, we take trains to avoid traffic jams and started monitoring the SNCF railway site in January for trains to Arcachon, booking our chosen times as soon as tickets became available on January 28^th. Friends of ours waited 24 hours and ended up with seats at 6:30am out on Thursday and 10:30pm back on Sunday.

Hopefully, that other famous French tradition – of transportation unions going on strike just as millions prepare to travel – won’t derail our plans.

Lorie Teeter Lichtlen is a Paris-based journalist and ghostwriter. Her work has been published in outlets including Air Mail, The Wall Street Journal, W Magazine, Women’s Wear Daily, and Newsweek. She also shares her quirky insights into life in France via her own Substack at Little Lights on Rosa Happiness Street. Lorie is a member of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.

And while these migratory birds from Africa may look elegant as they fly above Paris, their journey is more precarious than that of the tourists admiring them from below.

BirdLife International figures two billion birds from 500 species use this flyway twice each year. However, 10 percent are already threatened with extinction, and many fly on razor-thin energy margins during migration. Wars in their flight path make their journey even more dangerous.

Hazards in Flight

Birds of eastern Africa fly directly over the Persian Gulf – its 70 wetlands and uninhabited islands critical for breeding and migrants. The highest bird abundance and diversity in the area is found in mangrove forests in the Strait of Hormuz – now susceptible to explosions, toxic fumes, oil spills, and direct attack.

Assessing damage in the Gulf is difficult. During conflicts, funding is disrupted and conservation work limited. Dedicated conservationists use ceasefire periods to monitor birds and wildlife, and gather data. Their work is often unpaid and always under dangerous conditions.

Lingering Indirect Impact

In Iran, Iman Ebrahimi, founder of the AvayeBoom Bird Conservation Society, has spent more than a decade building 14 national-scale bird and wetland conservation initiatives. He told me that during his April ceasefire site visits to the Arjan Wetlands and other migration ‘stopovers,’ his limited inspection did not reveal large-scale destruction from the war itself; however, he did find significant evidence of indirect impact: repeated explosions drive birds from established habitats, forcing them into inferior terrain.

On the upside: fewer people in sensitive areas means less disturbance; and without water being siphoned off by humans, wetland levels rose – allowing 10,000 flamingos to breed successfully.

Birds that continue north from the Gulf must navigate a geographic bottleneck in Lebanon, a highly biodiverse area where sporadic fighting continues. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon (SPNL), the partner there of BirdLife International, notes some coastal towns have experienced an ecosystem collapse, eradicating safe places for people and wildlife.

For more than 40 years, SPNL’s Director General, Assad Serhal, has led this globally recognized conservation brand incorporating ancient community management with modern techniques. He told me, “The miracle of birds’ migration across the Middle East is a reminder that life will continue, regardless of our differences.”

Migrating birds rely on known stopovers to rest and replenish. But war destroys food sources, habitat, and nesting sites (such as wetlands and forests) forcing birds to make life-or-death decisions literally ‘on the wing’ to find alternative stopovers and expending energy they may not have. Drones pose a more complicated problem as bird flocks can be mistaken for enemy targets, and fiber-optic drones can trail dozens of miles of hazardous, entangling cable.

Beyond the Middle East…

In Ukraine, a 2022-2023 study, led by the National Academy of Sciences, on the direct impacts of the war with Russia, found 200 Russian missiles decimated colonies of nesting avocets. These attacks and resulting fires damaged more than 700,000 acres of natural habitat, killed massive numbers of nesting birds, such as pelicans and terns, burned nests, and eradicated the insects that many birds rely on for food.

Birds that migrate to France encounter disruptions flying over Sudan. Its ancient 1,500-acre Al-Sunut nature reserve and huge forest of acacia trees – once host to more than a hundred bird species plus monkeys and small mammals – was a critical stopover site for migrating birds. Just a few years of war has reduced it to stumps.

Nevertheless, Ebrahimi in Iran does not give up. “Where there is a stronger connection between people and nature, conservation continues in a more resilient way,” he says. “Conservation is relationships, persistence, and the quiet decision of people to continue.” And birds will continue to fly northward every spring, unaware of country borders or what lies ahead.

Deborah Rivel is an award-winning wildlife filmmaker; co-author of bird-finding book Birdwatching in New York City and on Long Island and owner of streaming nature sounds WildTones.com. She serves on the Audubon CT/NY and Friends of BirdLife International boards, and on the BirdLife Advisory Group, and founded a volunteer group which monitors beach-nesting birds. Deb travels extensively photographing birds and wildlife, and works to engage and inspire people to experience and protect nature.

Months before the US-Israeli attack on Iran, the US was seen increasingly in Europe as a doubtful ally, no longer trustworthy. Conflicting statements from the White House and Iran itself have to date done nothing to change that perception.

Back in December, Munich security chairman Wolfgang Ischinger told Deutsche Welle at the agency’s conference, “Obviously, trust has been damaged. Think of Greenland.”

The lynchpin to decoupling came the following month around the time of the Davos global economic summit, when Trump renewed his bellicose overtures, suggesting he might seize Greenland, an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Denmark, by force.

“Greenland was the turning point,” says INSEAD political science Professor Emeritus Douglas Webber, a specialist on the European Union, speaking to Reporting from Paris. “There had been tensions between the EU and the US previously, but there was never a question of one NATO state invading another. This was when Europeans realized they could no longer rely on the US as they did during and after the Cold War.”

It wasn’t just Europeans who were shocked. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former Governor of the Bank of England, was surprisingly blunt in his Davos speech. “Call it what it is – a system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests, using economic integration as coercion,” he said. Europe, he continued, was among “the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.”

A History of Blah-Blah

Europeans have been talking about separating from the US on defense for decades. In the 1980s, French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed on the need to establish a European defense independent of the US.

“They realized that in the next few decades, there would be fewer Americans of European ancestry,” Professor Webber continues. “Europe would become less important, while Asia would become more dominant. So, they made a start – peacekeeping in Mali, a small force in Bosnia during the Civil War in the former Yugoslavia – but a planned rapid-reaction force of 60,000 soldiers never materialized.”

Today, with wars in Ukraine and Iran, China extending its reach as an economic and military power, and increasingly aggressive American actions abroad, Europe’s pursuit of strategic autonomy has never appeared more pressing… or evident. And circumstances are now showing the White House that the tenets of allied support and common interest work both ways: Gulf and European countries flat out declared their disinterest in becoming involved in the Iran war. Weeks after the February 28 attack, the Trump administration’s calls for support in its war in Iran remain largely unheeded.

A New Turning Point?

“Polls show that most Europeans think the Iran war was not a good idea, and they would be outraged if their governments deployed troops to send their sons to be killed,” Professor Webber says. French former general and senior NATO officer Michel Yakovleff was unusually outspoken: “Joining Trump’s coalition today is like buying a ticket to dinner and dancing on the Titanic the evening after it hit the iceberg.”

European leaders were equally determined in their resolve to stay out of the war in Iran. Instead of joining the US-Israeli military action, European nations aligned to defend their interests and allies in the region.

• EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas: “Nobody is ready to put their people in harm’s way in the Strait of Hormuz. We have to find diplomatic ways to keep this open.”

• German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius: “What does Trump expect from a handful of European frigates that the powerful US navy cannot do? This is not our war. We have not started it.”

• UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband: “Ending the conflict is the best and surest way to get the strait reopened.”

• French President Emmanuel Macron: “France is ready to escort ships and tankers in the Strait of Hormuz once the situation is ‘calmer,’ but that mission must be entirely separate from the ongoing war operations and bombings.”

France sent its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, escorted by its carrier strike group, to the Eastern Mediterranean to provide a defensive shield for allied nations around the Gulf, while the UK deployed a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Dragon, to the Mediterranean. And on March 19, the UK published on its website a statement announcing they would join a coalition of some 30 countries in efforts to secure passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

On the financial side, French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu announced March 25 an extra €8.5 billion of military budget to build more weapons, including ground-based air defense missiles and anti-drone systems. Lecornu, himself a former defense minister, also mentioned a plan to create public-private companies to order and stockpile weapons built in Europe to allow France, allied nations, and export clients to order effectively off-the-shelf without a lengthy wait.

Guns and Butter

While the need for an independent European defense seems to be broadly accepted, decoupling goes beyond producing armaments. Unraveling more than 70 years of post-World War Two defense pacts is not simple. “Even when Europe has been united, for instance, in supporting Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion, it has done so under Washington’s leadership,” the director of Carnegie Europe, Rosa Balfour, wrote in an op-ed in the French afternoon daily, Le Monde. “This dependence on the US goes beyond material relations. It is deeply rooted in the European mindset.”

Those concerns have fueled political and military discussions about the need for a stronger, more united, European Union. But a unified EU defense sans the US comes with a pretty hefty price tag, one which will be borne by taxpayers of the member states, who are now also facing rising energy costs directly related to the US-Israel actions in Iran. This big concern goes beyond defense. To quote an advisor to former US president Bill Clinton during his 1992 US presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

European nations in NATO, under pressure from the Trump administration, have agreed to raise core defense spending to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (up from 2 percent), with a further 1.5 percent to be spent to improve roads and ports for military use, cybersecurity, and energy pipelines. Spain has held out, sticking to its 2.1 percent target, which Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez insists meets its capability targets for the forces. That comes at a cost to taxpayers.

“Tax increases or cuts in services will not go down well with Europeans,” continues Professor Webber. “They are attached to their welfare state that provides for medical costs, pensions, etc. Europeans are not accustomed to paying for defense; not just arms but military satellites, or information collection via technology.”

Indeed, an opinion poll by ING Bank Consumer Research shows little public support for that fiscal boost for military means in six nations – Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain. Nearly three-quarters – 72 percent – of respondents see higher military spending hurting their own spending power with inflation, cuts in social services, and tax hikes. Less than a third of poll respondents thought they stood to gain from spending increases for the military.

Infighting for Funding

In the midst of the need to consolidate further to create a joint European defense, competition for available funding to build military armaments is straining relations between EU member countries. For example, a corporate struggle for control of a €100 billion project for a new fighter jet has led to division between the partners (France, and Germany) and a fierce industrial row between the French company, Dassault Aviation, and its German partner, Airbus Defense and Space. This has stalled plans to build a new generation fighter (NGF), the key element in a planned Future Combat Air System (FCAS), backed by France, Germany, and Spain.

“Some sector analysts suggest this contretemps and resulting stall in operations is part of Washington’s approach to ‘divide and rule,’” said Tara Varma, managing director of the Strategic Foresight program for the German Marshall Fund (GMF), a US-based think tank, and director of the organization’s Paris office. The strategy, pitting one nation against another, gave some nations considered “friendly” (e.g., Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) preferential treatment, she added.

Paul Taylor, senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, says the current EU defense initiative is operating on a “pork barrel instinct,” with European nations favoring national suppliers in their rearmament drive – a ‘renationalization of defense’ – with Rheinmetall, for example, benefitting from orders from Germany. Professor Webber suggests the infighting might desist “if the EU were to change its single market rule, so that no government could discriminate in favor of its own national suppliers.”

Meanwhile, according to media reports, rather than see the project cancelled, France is considering appointing a former arms procurement chief, Laurent Collet-Billon, to act as the French moderator to effect an agreement among the French and German industrial partners. Berlin reportedly has yet to appoint a German moderator.

The UK: In or Out?

Despite leaving the EU through Brexit, the UK has been attempting to join the EU’s €150 billion fund – Security Action For Europe (SAFE) – for the common procurement of weapons. Last November, London pulled out of the first round of applications, rejecting the hefty entry fee. Now it wants back in. “Trump has been so obnoxious to the UK, they had no choice but to throw in their lot with the Europeans,” says Professor Webber of the European nation with the closest ties to the US. “Brexit could not have been more poorly timed.”

António Costa, President of the European Council, told reporters on March 24 he was confident the EU and the UK would reach agreement on Britain’s joining.

Cui Bono? (Who Benefits?)

Given the internal political stumbling blocks and financial pressures, the US actually stands to benefit from a continually disunited Europe.

“The EU is the key arms market for the US,” wrote Hélène Masson, senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, in the think tank’s February research note. In fact, EU defense spending increased in the 2024 run-up to the second Trump administration and amid calls in European NATO states to strengthen the arms industry in Europe.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the EU member states spent €214 billion on defense, which rose to close to €300 billion in 2024, according to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, writing in the foreword of La Défense Européenne à l’Heure de la Guerre en Ukraine (Editions du Villard). Close to 80 percent of that arms spending went to companies outside the EU, she added. And a March 2025 fact sheet from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a Swedish think tank, shows the US accounted for 64 percent of arms imports by European NATO states in 2022-2024, up from 52 percent in 2015-2019.

And there’s a link between the Iran and the Ukraine wars, as the Trump administration has (temporarily) lifted sanctions on Russian oil exports to ease shortages caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. “Putin benefits from this financially,” points out Professor Webber, “and Zelensky is nervous.”

In the future, European leaders will want to keep on good terms with the US, “but they will be understandably reluctant to rely on the US for security,” adds Professor Webber. “We can say Europeans are deeply worried. And Greenland isn’t over yet.”

Pierre Tran reports on French defence policy and the arms industry. He writes for specialist outlets including Second Line of Defense, and European Security & Defence, and has worked for Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and Defense News. He is a contributor to Friends On The Shelf, a London-based magazine of short memoirs. Pierre is a member of the Anglo American Press Association of Paris.

Some years ago, the late Francesco Trapani, then the CEO of Italian jewelry house Bulgari, was asked what the biggest threat to his business was. His answer was direct, to the point, and one word: “War.”

The war in focus this year is the US-Israeli attacks on Iran and the subsequent rapid spread of hostilities in the oil-producing and exporting Persian Gulf region.

“War dims the outlook for the sector,” Luca Solca, a senior analyst at Bernstein where he covers global luxury goods, told talking to Reporting from Paris. “War is bad for luxury goods, as it typically entails a recession and depressed consumer ‘feel good.’ Luxury – like all discretionary sectors – thrives on macroeconomic growth and strong consumer sentiment.”

That consumer sentiment turned sour early on in the war, as global oil prices skyrocketed and stock markets around the world plunged – resulting in the worst returns for the sector since COVID/2022.

Bombs and Other External Pressures

But even before the war in the Persian Gulf and its economic impact, severe external pressures were weighing on luxury fashion. The latest McKinsey and The Business of Fashion (BOF) annual report, issued before the attacks on Iran, was already gloomy: Executives described the industry as no longer merely facing ‘uncertainty’ but entrenched in ‘challenge,’ with tariff pressures and geopolitical complexities ranking among the top obstacles.

These external pressures include:

• Persistent inflation and consumer cost constraints, which have curbed discretionary spending across major markets, in particular in China, which had accounted for some 30 percent of the sector’s business.

• Intensification of price sensitivity. Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs has forced up the price of luxury goods in the key US market by between 10 and 20 percent for many labels, according to quarterly financial reports.

• Evolving value systems among younger consumers who demand accountability and sustainability, putting a spotlight on business practices – especially supply chains. (Over the past two years, a broad investigation by Italian authorities into the labor practices of luxury fashion companies such as Dior, Armani, and Loro Piana uncovered incidences of labor exploitation and unregistered employment in their supply chains. The investigations are in various states of amicable resolution,)

But some of today’s luxury sector problems are self-inflicted. Brands raised prices exponentially during the post-COVID boom. According to a report by Singapore-based Channel News Asia (CNA), the average price of luxury goods increased between 50-70 percent between 2019 and 2024, much of it due to post-pandemic ‘revenge spending.’

As customer demand surged, brands flexed their pricing power, giving rise to hyper-growth within the sector, and targeting an increasingly wealthy but smaller customer base. For example, multiple independent sources such as Vogue and Sotheby’s report that boutique prices for the medium-sized Chanel Classic Flap Bag have nearly doubled between 2019 and 2026: rising from around $5,800 in 2019 to $10,800 today, without a perceived increase in craftsmanship.

Exodus of the Aspirational

A recent Bain & Company report indicates that rising prices have also pushed out middle-income aspirational buyers, with millions of customers deserting the luxury sector in recent years. “The most fascinating element is sociological, namely a form of ‘separatism’ or ‘decoupling’ by the upper classes,” says Frédéric Godart, a French sociologist and Professor of Organisational Behaviour at business school INSEAD. “This has been noted by many scholars and is particularly acute in luxury consumption.”

Meanwhile, a number of brands have rallied to serve the ‘merely wealthy’ customer with money to spend. Brands such as Eleventy and Aurélien compete with Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana. Mid-price leather goods companies such as Coach and Polène aim to attract value-conscious consumers who are happy to buy a stylish bag for less than $1,000 versus a big-brand bag with prices starting at $3,500.

And Inditex, parent company of fast-fashion doyenne Zara, apparently believes customers disenfranchised by the rising cost of luxury fashion are ready for a more upscale offering: John Galliano was hired in March to design an elite range for the Zara portfolio.

Can Musical Chairs Generate Growth?

Today, luxury industry growth projections are almost flat, with the sector expected to grow this year at just 3-6 percent – a forecast made before the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. The days when luxury fashion could grow and pursue exclusivity by simply raising the price tag are over.

Prices of each new collection may well continue to rise but customers will expect creativity to rise in tandem. As a consequence, the sector is playing musical chairs, with some 15 new creative directors taking the helm at luxury brands in the past year-and-a-half – including Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, Sarah Burton at Givenchy, Maria Grazia Chiuri at Fendi (where she began her career), and Jonathan Anderson at Dior.

Perhaps most importantly, there is also Demna at Gucci (replacing the short-tenured Sabato De Sarno) on whose shoulders lies the brand’s anticipated regeneration – as well as that of Kering, Gucci’s luxury conglomerate owner, itself with a new leader at the helm, Luca de Meo, formerly CEO of French automaker Renault.

“The new CEO {at Kering} has managed to shore up the business and not let it go under, fixing the balance sheet and debt emergency,” says Solca. “Primum vivere, deinde philosophari (live first then philosophize). Relaunching the brands is a different game, which is now in the very first inning, in my impression… Brands are trying to reignite interest and desire. But as De Sarno has vividly demonstrated at Gucci, not all changes work.”

Judgements on the Runway

Critical consensus following Paris Fashion Week in March found Demna’s first ‘maximalist/minimalist’ collection for Gucci “a clear break/reset for the brand, more good than bad,” and while not yet coherent with a so-called new Gucci vision, “possessing cultural relevance and edge.”

^{Demna for Gucci, Milan, FW '26 collection [video © Tommaso Palazzi]}

Blazy’s collection for Chanel, on the other hand, was received by critics as one of the most successful designer debuts in recent fashion history, both critically and commercially.

Elsewhere, appointed creative director at Dior in June 2025, Jonathan Anderson’s recent womenswear collection, with its Monet-water-lilies-nature theme, was critically considered “playful but crafted.”

The Hermès Haven

And then there’s the sector’s ‘safe haven,’ its standard-bearer: Hermès. Now in its sixth generation of family leadership (the seventh generation is currently working its way up the ladder), it has consistently performed better than its peers in both strong and weak cycles because of its strategy: Hermès grows by staying small.

Its famed exclusivity is maintained by fostering scarcity, controlling supply, and focusing on ultra-wealthy clients. This practice has found the company in the crosshairs of class action lawsuits filed by customers frustrated at being relegated to waiting lists for Birkin handbags for which they are willing and ready to pay upwards of $10,000. (Resale prices aren’t much cheaper. Auction house Sotheby’s brochure this year notes that US prices for core leather Birkin and Kelly bags rose between 6.3 percent and 8.9 percent in January 2026; in Europe, 7.3 percent to 9.4 percent. The classic 30” Birkin, second hand, now costs $14,900 [US] vs 10,600 euros [Europe]).

CEO Axel Dumas sees no reason to change strategy, citing client loyalty and brand desirability for continued growth. “In a complex geopolitical and economic context, the house is strengthening its fundamentals more than ever,” he said, following the company’s robust 2025 results, released earlier this year.

But for the rest of the sector, the era of easy expansion has waned. Profitability now hinges on strategic segmentation, consumer engagement, and balancing tradition with innovation.

^{Shoppers line up outside the Louis Vuitton flagship store in the Champs Elysees, Paris (March, 2026) [video © Celine Marchand]}

And the Future?

Analysts see normalization by 2027, but “2026 will not be easy,” LVMH boss Bernard Arnault predicted, following the conglomerate’s 2025 results at the start of this year. It’s a sentiment echoed by others, too.

“Success will certainly come from creativity and imagination,” says Godart. “The reshuffling of creative leaders and their mobility usually generates creative sparks, so this should benefit the industry. But it won’t be enough…

“For the first time, the luxury sector will need to keep an eye on costs. Failure will come from ignoring the fundamental sociological factors behind the plateauing of its growth – namely the fact that the upper-middle class (the aspirational customer) now prioritizes value for money and style, and even functionality, over status.”

Attracting Gen Z and Gen Alpha is a hard-to-fathom challenge. “The sector has tried to engage the next generation,” Godart continues, “by investing in gaming and Web3, but it has largely failed because of a tension between what luxury entails and the values of these younger segments.”

At Bernstein, Solca is counting on consumers in the US and China to open their wallets, but macro-economic conditions temper his outlook. “Failure,” he says, could come from “a stock market correction that could puncture American consumer confidence, before we have any significant improvement in Chinese demand.”

Navigating Uncharted Waters

The current luxury conglomerates such as LVMH and Kering have been the predominant business model for the past two decades: their size and diversity allow them to control costs and weather economic storms. But geopolitical uncertainty and technological advances such as AI are creating uncharted waters.

Godart believes these challenges have created what he calls the inherent reality of luxury. “You cannot grow forever,” he says, “because if you do, you are no longer truly luxury.” It could be the sector’s biggest creative challenge yet.

Editor’s note: Kering, Hermès, and LVMH are publicly traded companies, while Chanel is privately owned by French brothers Alain and Gérard Wertheimer through the holding company Chanel Limited, headquartered in London

The following experts were interviewed for this article:

He beat conservative rival Rachida Dati in the second round, with 50.52 percent of the vote. Grégoire, 48, is no stranger to Paris City Hall - he spent several years as first deputy to outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo, who reigned over the city for 12 years.

So, what do Parisians really want from their new mayor?

Elaine Cobbe is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist based in Paris. A former foreign correspondent with CBS News, she has covered many of the major international stories of the past three decades, including the conflicts in Iraq, Kosovo, and Rwanda, and terror attacks in Paris, Brussels, and Barcelona. A regular commentator on French and international politics for news outlets in France and her native Ireland, she is also a researcher and trainer in journalism and trauma. Elaine is a committee member of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.

[videographer/editor: Celine Marchand]

“Paris is always a good idea.”

The phrase is often associated with (though apparently not said by) Audrey Hepburn in the 1954 movie, Sabrina, thanks to her unique connection with the City of Light.

Millions of people around the world would agree. Some of them live in Paris; some of those are journalists and correspondents – like us, who know and see and understand the city in a different way. We have witnessed it grow and change and develop into a modern European leader and a world-class capital in business, politics, and defense, as well as a beacon in the three Cs: culture, couture, and cuisine.

At the same time, we have seen the news business morph into something less: less reliable, less well-financed, with fewer journalists. Many of those who have been jettisoned from newsrooms have resurfaced with bespoke online news platforms. Worthy undertakings but solo performances can only go so far.

We believe there is more to be gained for journalists, news consumers, and the future of real journalism by coming together to launch tailor-made online magazines – such as this one: Reporting from Paris. With real news and real analysis by real journalists.

Most of us are members of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris. Founded in 1907, it is the oldest foreign press association in France. Most of us have been here for many decades and have worked for a variety of English-language publications and broadcast outlets: Associated Press, CBS News, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNBC, PBS, ABC News, Dow Jones, and more.

We aim to reach a global English-speaking audience who have an affinity for and more than a passing knowledge of Paris. We’re not aiming at an audience focused on luxury but on passion: for insights and ideas, facts and fancies, profound thought, and light-hearted whimsy. (There is a bit of luxury thrown in, of course: this is the land of Versailles, after all, and luxury is big business in Paris.)

We’re starting out with the support of a wise investor who believes a new, online model for the dissemination of news and information is the future. Substack as a platform is free to use and wonderfully manageable. This makes it possible to spend most of our budget on journalists and journalism to ensure a high standard of editorial output.

We’ll be circulating Reporting from Paris gratis, every month. Eventually, we will introduce a paywall for some content – the kind of long-form content that costs more to produce. And to add more free stories and freelance contributors.

We hope this first edition finds a place in your busy day, and we look forward to your comments.

Sincerely,

Shellie Karabell has spent more than 40 years in broadcast journalism as a news executive, anchor, producer, and field reporter in her native USA, Europe, the USSR/Russia and the Middle East for ABC/WTN, PBS, Dow Jones Broadcast, CNBC, and Forbes.com. She has covered some of the major news events of the 20^th century: the release of the American hostages from Iran in 1981; the collapse of the Berlin Wall (1989); civil wars in Lebanon (1983) and Yugoslavia (1991-92), and USSR/Russia (1986- present). She is currently VP of the Anglo American Press Association of Paris (President 2022-2025).

Arriving with my children in the United Arab Emirates, I am eagerly anticipating our holiday. I have a little itinerary all mapped out in my head. First, the famous Sheikh Zayed Mosque, then the Louvre, and the Abrahamic Family House. A friend based in Dubai had told me it was an extraordinary place. The itinerary is ambitious, but I hope to wrap it up in style with a visit to the Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi.

During my studies in the humanities, I attended the Sorbonne on Rue Victor Cousin in Paris. So, I’m curious to discover the Emirati extension of this historic institution. Founded in 1257, the university is a relic of the French Middle Ages, so its expansion to the Middle East – a symbol of opulence and modernity – has always struck me as anachronistic. The United Arab Emirates seems too “new” for a university rooted in the 13th century.

From Holiday to Hostilities

We drive to Abu Dhabi, in a relative’s car, around noon on February 28. As a journalist, I’m usually glued to the news, checking the AFP dispatches. Today, there is, literally, a bombshell: Iran, attacked by coordinated American and Israeli strikes early this morning, has just retaliated against Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Emirates – neighboring countries that are home to US bases.

I immediately think of the airspace. Will it close? Should we return to Dubai? My children are taking the events lightly. My sister, who accompanies us, is too. “You know how it is here,” she says mockingly. “In 48 hours, it’ll be over.”

Fear grips me briefly as I enter the mall next to the mosque to buy a headscarf for myself and a qamis for my son. Inside, the mall is full of tourists from all over the world, strolling through the aisles. No panic shows on their faces. Then, seconds later, everything changes.

Missile Alert

A missile alert sounds on cell phones. A message pops up: “Due to the current situation, potential missile threat…” The alarm – shrill, cutting like a knife – takes over. So, this, I realize, is the first sound of war: high-pitched alarms that trap you and crush you for a few seconds. I manage to find a headscarf and a djellaba for my son. We’re ready for the mosque visit. We’re still tourists, after all.

Outside the mall, the immaculate forecourt of the mosque dazzles us. The blue sky gives no hint of the clashes. Suddenly, a dull thud echoes. An intercepted missile. Around us, nothing moves. Meanwhile, visitors explore the mosque, amazed by the purity of this marble from Macedonia. A haven of peace, so different from what is going on outside, around us. In the distance, I spot a wisp of gray smoke. What a strange feeling.

On my phone, worried messages start coming in. I need to reassure my loved ones in Paris before I can continue to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. I am determined to enjoy the place. I’ve heard about the Picasso exhibition… now I’m hearing the sound of bombing. But not a single tourist abandons the tour. A mix of recklessness and carelessness, perhaps. The afternoon has flown by. For many of us, war remains just a word. And despite the media frenzy and the feeling of experiencing it through images, it still remains an abstraction for us Westerners.

We head back to Dubai to avoid driving at night. During the trip, I scan the international news. The situation is escalating. The airport has just been hit. No need to be a fortune-teller to realize the airspace is going to close. Then, the famous artificial ‘island’, The Palm, is hit. Loved ones back in Europe are worried. We hear the Burj Khalifa tower, standing 828 meters (almost 2,717 feet) tall, appears to have been targeted. Here, on the spot, we have to sort out fact from fiction. Rumors bounce from one continent to another amid the frenzy of social media.

Finding Flights

In the days that follow, missile alerts start popping up on our phones. My flight is canceled. It’s impossible to fly through Manama (in Bahrain) where clashes have broken out between pro-Iranian Shiites and the authorities. I have four days left in my holiday to find a flight home. I hear about the ‘Fil d’Ariane’ system set up by the French consular services. By registering, you can be contacted for repatriation. I’m hopeful.

We continue our vacation. I try to reach the French consulate in Dubai. After two days of unsuccessful calls, an agent picks up. I am now registered along with my children. She will contact me again and assures me that the Dubai authorities are covering the additional nights for stranded tourists. The reality is more complicated. The establishment where I am staying refutes this claim. Nothing is free.

I decide to wait for news from my airline. In the afternoon, we enjoy the beach, hoping to escape the missile alerts. That evening, we stay up late together as a family, caught up in the naive joy of Westerners oblivious to the insidious spread of war around us.

Originally, I had chosen these dates for our holiday in the hopes of enjoying the special atmosphere of this month of Ramadan. But two days after the strikes begin, a sense of lethargy hangs over the streets of Dubai. The heart of Gulf capitalism is in slow motion. Even the Deliveroo and Careem delivery riders, who usually fill the streets, have parked their bikes early in the evening. Too bad for the ravenous stomachs awaiting deliveries.

I still haven’t made a decision about how and when to leave. Wait for a call from the French consulate, hope for a flight offer from the tour operator, or leave Dubai by road? The days go by. Reality catches up with me. My return date has passed. At the hotel, I have to pay for the extra nights. 

The High Cost of Escape

I’m looking for plane tickets, but the fares are exorbitant, and the information is contradictory. Flights are trickling into Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Nothing to Bahrain. Some French citizens fled on the very first day starting by car via Muscat (in Oman). The trip takes six hours: just passing through the border checkpoint, which is swamped with people, takes over three hours.

After two days of searching, I find a flight to London from Muscat, going via Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. With the crisis, it’s not just airfares that have skyrocketed. We’re talking $1,200 just to drive to Muscat. One of my friends hooks me up with a more affordable driver. Just thinking about the trip is already exhausting me. But I have to go home.

We spend the night in Muscat at a cheap hotel, just a stone’s throw from the airport. Many tourists, both Asian and European, are staying there. They all share the same concern: will Oman close its borders? An announcement: some flights have just been canceled. The next day, we arrive at the airport, not exactly reassured. A long line of Spanish tourists suggests more delays ahead. Entry is restricted. Only travelers with a ticket are allowed in. Against all odds, we get through.

The airport looks new. Palm trees line the entrance. It’s empty, too. We’re a far cry from the crowds we’d been warned about. We breeze through check-in and customs without a hitch. It takes no more than 10 minutes. The journey seems to be coming to an end. Once at the gate, many French passengers mingle with pilgrims heading to Jeddah and Mecca in Saudi Arabia. I hope to avoid flying too close to Riyadh and the Prince Sultan military base, south-east of the capital, where several ballistic missiles had been intercepted in the preceding days. The plane flies past the city. I’m relieved, but it doesn’t last long.

A Medical Emergency

Mid-flight, we’re urgently diverted to Riyadh. A man has fallen ill. Once we land, emergency personnel take him into their care. The plane is grounded for three hours on the tarmac. We won’t make our flight to London, I think, philosophically. Oh, well. It’s refueled, but some unruly passengers delay the departure. It’s hot, but miraculously, no babies are crying. The plane takes off three hours late. I don’t have internet.

Will the flight to London wait for us? I let the crew know, and they admit there’s nothing they can do. Once we land in Jeddah, I rush to the departure lounge. The next flight is delayed, too. What luck! We arrive in London after a six-hour flight. I know the city well, but it’s my first visit to Heathrow Airport. A strange feeling comes over me. I’m leaving a war zone, almost 6,000 kilometers from London. Just over two hours on the Eurostar and I’m back home in Paris. Yet the relief is only temporary.

History has shown that this situation will eventually backfire on us. War doesn’t end just by turning our backs on it, by jumping on a plane and returning home.

Nadia Henni-Moulaï is a political journalist, novelist, and professor of journalism at the IEJ and CFPJ in Paris, as well as a professor of literature. A specialist in Franco-Algerian relations, she is a regular commentator on France24 and contributes frequently to French and international media such as France Info, Le Monde, and Middle East Eye. She is the author of several books on French Muslims and the Algerian war, publishes on Substack, and has recently launched Faktuel, an independent political podcast.

Evening commuters pick their way home through broken concrete and piles of rusty earth abutting the Canal Saint-Martin in northern Paris. A heavy-duty excavator idles nearby.

Quai de Valmy was once abuzz with cars and delivery vans. Now, this artery is making way for tree-lined flower beds and bike lanes, amid a broader urban overhaul underway inside and outside the French capital.

“It’s noisy and it’s dirty,” says Guy Biazo, who manages a clothing store next to the construction. “It’s not pretty, especially when it rains. But I’m for it, if it improves the neighborhood.”

For more than a decade, Paris and its suburbs – together referred to as Le Grand Paris or Greater Paris – have seemed like one giant construction site, in a bid to unlock transportation connectivity and urban development, fight pollution, and create a greener, more livable region able to withstand a climate-changed future.

Particularly ambitious is a massive infrastructure project, one of Europe’s largest, now underway in Le Grand Paris. At the heart of this is a major expansion of the metro network with new links being created between the often-gritty multiethnic towns in the banlieues (suburbs) ringing the capital. The Grand Paris Express, as it is known, aims to break down barriers between the city and its outskirts – places where Paris historically exported what it didn’t want, like sewage.

For some, today’s public works inside and surrounding the capital reach the scale and ambition of the 19^th-century urban revolution orchestrated by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann and his boss Napoleon III. Their famed transformation of Paris contributed to much of the city we know and love today.

“It’s not the Haussmann revolution in Paris – it’s a revolution of a larger territory,” says Paris Municipal Councilor Maud Lelièvre, who also heads the French chapter of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), reflecting on the raft of development projects across Greater Paris. “It changes the lives of a lot of people, giving them proximity to the capital.”

But the overhaul, especially within the capital, is also earning sharp pushback.

“Haussmann respected and showcased Paris,” says Patrice de Moncan, an urban historian and Haussmann expert. “Today, things are being broken – and that’s what depresses me.” Still, he hails the revamp of Greater Paris, with triple the capital’s population, as “frankly interesting.”

In the Steps of Haussmann?

The urban upheaval nearly two centuries ago was also deeply controversial. Launched in 1853 – shortly after France’s first president, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, became emperor – it amounted to a sea change for a crowded, insalubrious metropolis recovering from another revolution.

That 19^th-century uprising saw the city’s trees chopped down and burned for firewood – but that wasn’t the only blight. “Paris was essentially a medieval city ravaged by cholera,” says de Moncan of the epidemic that killed thousands. “They didn’t know where to bury the dead. So, they threw them in the Seine river.”

Recognizing the urgent need for action, Napoleon III recruited Haussmann, a provincial administrator, as prefect of the Seine department then encompassing Paris. Next, he tasked his new protégé with a massive experiment.

“He told Haussmann to give the people of Paris air and water,” de Moncan says. “They were the biggest-ever public works in a city that continued to live – and also enriched itself.”

Narrow streets and decrepit slums were gutted and replaced with wide avenues and uniformly designed cream-colored buildings. Haussmann also upgraded or created new parks, including the Bois de Boulogne to the west and the Bois de Vincennes to the east, as well as the Buttes-Chaumont in the northeast – which transformed a grimy wasteland that once hosted the royal gallows.

Paris expanded, doubling its population and annexing suburban communities into eight new arrondissements, or neighborhoods. It became cleaner and greener, with a modern sewage system, potable water, and thousands of trees.

But government opponents blamed Haussmann for poor planning, skyrocketing costs, and alleged financial mismanagement. Napoleon ultimately dismissed him.

“It was a political criticism,” de Moncan says. “Rather than focus on the emperor, they targeted Haussmann.”

Napoleon III was deposed in 1870. Derided as “the demolisher,” Haussmann died in relative poverty, two decades later.

Now, many salute Haussmann’s accomplishments – even as the capital’s current transformation is in the crosshairs.

Growing Pains or Chaos?

Over the past two decades, the capital’s City Hall has earned kudos internationally for its war on cars, cleaning up the Seine river, creating 1,000km of bike lanes, and planting thousands more trees to ensure one of Europe’s most densely-populated and heatwave-vulnerable cities can survive a changing climate. The 2024 Paris Olympics triggered some of the works, also leading to new housing and transport links.

More changes are to come, including a planned garden around the Place de la Concorde, where Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette were guillotined.

“It’s kind of like growing pains – it’s not that much fun, but then it will be over,” says Paris tour guide and author Rosemary Flannery of the renovations. “I still feel the essence of Paris. I can still take people around these adorable old winding streets in the Marais, and many other parts of Paris. I hope that will prevail.”

Another person who welcomes the developments is lawmaker Lelièvre, who authored a City Hall study on preparing Paris for a hotter future, though she has a few concerns, too. “I think there were some very positive advances, but we didn’t sufficiently address the revolution when it comes to climate,” she says. “We need more trees, more renovation, more air corridors, more fighting against heat islands.”

Others, however, have been scathing – pointing to the Toblerone-shaped Triangle Tower skyscraper that has been rising over the low-lying capital’s 15th arrondissement, and describing the city’s overhaul as poorly planned, superficial, and ugly.

“People worldwide say Paris is Paris because there’s a sort of unity,” says Christine Nedelec, president of SOS Paris, an association campaigning for the preservation of the city’s heritage. “But if you create chaos with constructions having nothing to do with each other, which have a shocking effect, the soul of Paris could be destroyed.”

A Bigger Paris

Nor has the Greater Paris project escaped criticism. In the works are 200km of new metro tracks, including four new lines and 68 stations, as well as pedestrian zones, climate-friendly buildings, and greener streets.

On a human level, improved transportation under the Grand Paris plan means individuals and companies can move into areas more compatible with their needs and budgets and still access the city center – and other banlieues. The stigma of residing in the suburbs is fading.

Businesses, art galleries, and high-profile brands such as the fashion houses Chanel and Hermès have bases there. Residents like journalist Rozenn Le Saint are also moving out of the capital, attracted by lower housing prices and new metro lines.

“We would have loved to remain in Paris, but the rents are too high,” says Le Saint, who bought an apartment in the working-class suburb of Aubervilliers. “We did check if the Grand Paris Express passed near us, even if it wasn’t our first criteria for moving.”

But some claim the Grand Paris overhaul favors concrete over the environment. And like the capital, it is a work in progress. Whether it will have the same transformative legacy as Haussmann’s Paris remains uncertain.

“It needs more planning so people cross borders,” Lelièvre says. “We’re not there yet.”

Elizabeth Bryant (“Lisa”) is a Paris-based journalist with 30 years of experience across radio, print, and television. She was a long-time correspondent for Voice of America, has freelanced for outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, and Religion News Service (RNS), and currently contributes to Deutsche Welle’s English-service radio. Previously based in Cairo and the US, Elizabeth has worked for AFP and UPI and was a staff reporter for US national and local news outlets. She is a member of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.

“I have a lot of respect and admiration for the patriotism of Donald Trump, for his will to defend the interests of his country first and above all,” Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, said a few days after Trump took office in January 2025. He also praised Trump’s immediate expulsion of migrants and said his RN party was now a “privileged interlocutor” in international relations because like Trump’s US it favored “economic patriotism” and “the control of borders.”

The Far-Right French Facelift

The French far right, first under Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928-2025), who co-founded the then-Front National in 1972, has been an important force in French politics since long before Trump was first elected a decade ago. Now led by his daughter Marine Le Pen and her young protégé Bardella, today’s renamed RN has successfully “detoxified” its reputation as a party of racists and antisemites to become, according to all opinion polls, by far the most popular party in France today – as well as the largest single party in the French National Assembly and one of the largest in the European Parliament. It does not want to throw away its hard-won current political advantage by being associated with an increasingly unpredictable and anti-European US president.

Opinion polls suggest that its candidates (it will probably be Bardella who stands for the presidency next year if Marine Le Pen is disqualified by the courts over the organized embezzlement of EU parliamentary funds) will win the Elysée presidential palace and take control of the assembly in 2027. In the March municipal elections, the RN and its allies won control of more towns and villages across France than it has ever done before, including Nice on the Côte d’Azur, even if it did not fulfil its hopes of wresting Marseille, the second-biggest city, from its Socialist rivals.

From the start of Trump’s second term, RN leaders have been anxious not to squander their political lead. Bardella has mixed his occasional praise for the US president with caution, and he insisted from the beginning that he was not a “little brother” of Trump – a revealing phrase that anticipated future attacks from the left over the far-right’s links to Trumpism.

Social Distancing

Bardella and Marine Le Pen formally congratulated Trump on his re-election, but they also ordered their MPs and MEPs (members of the French National Assembly and the European Parliament) to avoid effusive praise for the US president. A few weeks later, Bardella cancelled his planned appearance at CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference, a donor networking event for conservative candidates, in the US) after Steve Bannon performed what appeared to be a Nazi salute. Bardella wanted to ensure that the RN’s opponents were not given another opportunity to link the party to Fascists and Nazis.

Though France was among the first European countries to harbor a successful far-right party after the second world war, these days it is not alone: in the past few years, rightwing populists and nationalists, some with extreme views verging on neo-Nazism, have scored successes across the continent, including in the UK, where voters approved the nationalist Brexit project to leave the EU in 2016, and in Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni leads Italy’s successful coalition government. The far right has done well even in western European countries thought to have been inoculated against fascism and extremism by their experiences before, during, and after WW2, namely Germany, Spain, and Portugal.

Problems in Far-Right Paradise

Trump loves these parties and politicians, but they do not all love Trump. Just over a year into Trump’s second term, the political risks immediately identified by Le Pen and Bardella – who, like Meloni, are among the most pragmatic politicians on the far right – are becoming ever more apparent.

Trump presents four big problems for the European far right.

• First, he is aggressively anti-European, and the European far right are all Europeans; tariffs also hurt European voters – winemakers for example – as well as US consumers.

• Second, he has shown himself to be sympathetic to Russia’s Vladimir Putin despite the Kremlin’s war to seize Ukraine, a very unpopular position among Europeans who fear they may be next in line for Russian aggression.

• Third, Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu have launched a highly destabilizing war against Iran that is likely to push up energy prices for European consumers.

• Fourth, if Trump continues to trample over the rule of law at home in the US – provoking demonstrations and an explosive backlash from American voters of the sort already seen on the streets of Minneapolis – the politicians in Europe who have tied themselves too closely to the Trump brand will be discredited as a result of that association.

Suspicious of a superpower

This danger for the far right’s credibility from Trump’s actions is particularly acute in France. The French, from the far left through the center to the Gaullist right and the extreme right, have long been suspicious of the American superpower and its habit of riding roughshod over European wishes. In the French mind, Trump’s “riding roughshod” has now turned into outright contempt for European democracy and what used to be called the “rules-based international order.” In addition, US attacks in Venezuela and Iran have intensified crises for US-EU relations in the military, commercial, and diplomatic domains.

Charles Kushner, a convicted felon, and father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared, has appalled the French establishment since he was appointed US ambassador to France, most recently by interfering in French politics in support of a far-right French activist killed in a political brawl and then refusing to answer a diplomatic summons to the foreign ministry for a dressing down. For a politician like Marine Le Pen who presents herself as a loyal French republican with respect for the law and French institutions, and who is trying to win over French voters from the right and the center to add to her far-right base, it makes no sense to be seen to be close to Trump or his style of governing.

The RN, starting with Jean-Marie Le Pen and continuing to the present day with Jordan Bardella, have mostly kept their distance from the US and with the Trump administration, and are likely to continue to do so to ensure that their path to electoral victory in 2027 is not blocked by an inconvenient association with a US leader who appears to the rest of the world to be increasingly unhinged. Just past the one-year mark of the second Trump presidency, the advantage of being Washington’s political bedfellow is waning.

Victor Mallet is an author and foreign correspondent, who has worked for many years in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe for Reuters and the Financial Times, where he was previously Paris Bureau Chief and is now a Senior Editor. His latest book, published in February is Far-Right France: Le Pen, Bardella and the Future of Europe (Hurst). Victor is a member of the Anglo American Press Association of Paris.

What was Boulevard St Michel called previously?

ANSWER

From Connaissez-vous Paris? (Do You know Paris?) by Raymond Queneau, present edition published by Editions Gallimard, 2011.

Meet La Flâneuse!

But… what exactly is a ‘flâneuse’?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a flâneuse (or flâneur if a man) is someone who “walks around not doing anything in particular but watching people and society.” Famous flâneurs such as the American writer Edmund White (The Flâneur) and French poet and essayist Léon-Paul Fargue (Le Piéton de Paris) sauntered, strolled, and ambled through Paris in this time-honored tradition.

Being a flâneuse is a good way to meet people in Paris and to engage in casual conversation. And how to get around the city – with its continual roadworks and frequent demonstrations – is a favored topic.

So, one of my favorite conversational gambits is asking Parisians which mode of transport they prefer.

The Bus or the Metro?

“Of course, I only take the bus,” sniffed Marie, one of my interlocutors. “I like to go the pretty way.”

Then she waxed eloquent.

“In a Parisian bus, you’re floating through a land of marvels.” (I swear she said that.)

Still, that remark about “a land of marvels” got me thinking. Why not be a flâneuse across a wider swath of Paris?

I decided to give it a try.

La Flâneuse Takes the Bus

I chose the 80, a veritable rolling compendium that is a part of Paris history, sociology, and architecture: the picturesque streets below Montmartre; the Montmartre cemetery (final resting place of famous artistes such as Dalida, Degas, Nijinsky, Offenbach, and Stendhal); and the bustling Place de Clichy with the brasserie Wepler that Henry Miller immortalized in his scandalous Quiet Days in Clichy.

Get Ready to Gawk

The scenery changes as the busy and buzzing Gare Saint-Lazare, the first railway station in Paris (opened in 1837), gives way to the elegant Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées and “la plus belle avenue du monde” (as the French call the Champs-Élysées).

I get a glimpse of the haute couture shops on the exclusive Avenue Montaigne before the bus heads over the river to the Left Bank into les beaux quartiers with Haussmannian buildings, embassies, ministries, museums, and affluent residents. I was so busy staring to my left at the imposing École Militaire, founded under the reign of King Louis XV, that I almost missed the Eiffel Tower on my right!

At the end of the line, the Porte de Versailles throbs with life in the diverse and sprawling 15th arrondissement. Its skyscraper, La Tour Triangle, vies with the Tour Montparnasse for number one controversial eyesore.

On Board the Bus

Looking out a bus window offers a panoramic yet up-close view of the city. But it’s what goes on inside that offers a glimpse into real French life: everything from exquisitely polite passengers to loud telephone talkers to perfect strangers comparing heart conditions and hospitals. Oh, and troublemakers. I once saw a young woman dress down a bus driver who had politely asked her to keep her toddler from running up and down the aisle.

Sometimes, there is a curious solidarity, such as when the driver forgets to open the door at a stop. Suddenly, everyone is yelling, “La porte ! La porte !” – or, to translate that into English, “The door! The door!” To their credit, they are collectively coming to the defense of the little old lady or the person on crutches who desperately wants out.

The bus is a hotbed of conversations, too, some of which begin before even getting on. The other day, I was waiting at a stop when I observed an older woman with a cane turning down the offer of a place on the bench. She said she had a bone malady that had led to 61 operations, and preferred standing to sitting.

By that time, the young woman who had offered her the seat and I were totally intrigued. 61? What do you have? Do you have someone to help you? We were still talking inside the bus and waved goodbye to each other when I got off.

And how did I get back home after my little bus tour? On the metro – bien sûr!

Harriet Welty Rochefort grew up in the American Midwest, came to France via freighter after college, and stayed. A freelance journalist, professor of journalism and author of several books about Franco-American cultural differences, she lives in Paris with her French husband, Philippe. She is a member of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris. You can find her writing on Substack at harrietinparis.substack.com

^{Cafe de Flore, a legendary cafe on the Left Bank, St Germain district [video © Celine Marchand]}

The romantic idea of “April in Paris” was born in 1932 when Vernon Duke and E. Y. “Yip” Harburg set it to music for the Broadway musical Walk a Little Faster. The expression quickly became part of the public perception when Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, and others performed renditions of the song, and Doris Day starred in the April in Paris movie. The myth became entrenched.

I nearly fell for it myself.

As a young college grad packing for a six-month internship at Newsweek‘s Paris bureau, I had trouble closing my suitcase. I told my mother, “I think I’ll leave out my winter coat. After all, I’ll be arriving in Paris in the spring and be back by fall.”

Her reply? “Take it, honey. You don’t know when you’ll be back.”

My mother is a wise woman, and I was smart to follow her advice. It was so cold and wet that spring, I wore my winter coat through the end of June. And then my short-term stay stretched into decades, as so often happens to foreigners who discover the charms of Paris.

Soggy gardens led English poet Thomas Tusser to write “Sweet April showers do spring May flowers” centuries ago (in 1557!). The French are more pragmatic. “En avril, ne te découvre pas d’un fil, en mai fais ce qu’il te plaît” translates as “In April, don’t take off a single thread; in May, do as you please.”

Even so, trying to find a romantic spot for a picnic is not completely dependent upon the weather: a “keep off the grass” sign is probably lurking nearby.

A Fool-proof Plan

Due to Parisian fog, my flight from New York for that long-ago internship was diverted to Luxembourg. My new life in Paris started on April Fools’ Day.

The French call that April Fish Day (poisson d’avril). Children stick paper fish on the backs of classmates as a prank. If someone shouts “poisson d’avril!” the joke is on you. But the jokes are not just for kids.

French media have traditionally engaged in April Fish Day hoaxes. Some years ago, daily newspaper Le Parisien announced that Walt Disney Productions had secretly bought the Eiffel Tower and planned to move it to a construction site east of Paris (where Disneyland Paris stands today). This “news” was met with equal parts outrage and laughter.

Since Easter often falls in April, the holiday can be quite “fishy.” Shops stock chocolate fish, bells, and hens. The fish may signal the end of Lent or refer to the Biblical story of Jesus Christ multiplying the fish. Church bells supposedly sprout wings and fly to the Vatican for eggs, which they drop on the way back, prompting Easter egg hunts. (In the Alsace region, chocolate bunnies reportedly lay eggs.)

Yes, there are “April Showers” in Paris… but as promised in the song of the same name by Louis Silvers and B. G. De Sylva, featured in the 1921 Broadway show Bombo, those showers will bring May flowers. Just like in Thomas Tusser’s poem. Besides, while carrying your umbrella, you can always enjoy “Singin’ in the Rain…”

Lorie Teeter Lichtlen is a Paris-based journalist and ghostwriter. Her work has been published in outlets including Air Mail, The Wall Street Journal, W Magazine, Women’s Wear Daily, and Newsweek. She also shares her quirky insights into life in France via her own Substack at Little Lights on Rosa Happiness Street. Lorie is a member of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.