The French presidential contender wants to replace Berlin-centred European policymaking with economic planning, non-alignment and new diplomatic alliances.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is turning the Franco-German partnership into a central issue in France’s 2027 presidential campaign. The leader of La France Insoumise argues that cooperation between Paris and Berlin has too often allowed German economic and strategic priorities to shape the European Union. His alternative would keep France inside the EU while challenging its economic rules, withdrawing the country from NATO, reconsidering defence agreements with Germany and building closer ties with Spain and countries outside the traditional Western alliance.

A partnership no longer treated as untouchable

For more than six decades, French and German governments have presented their relationship as the political engine of European integration.

The 1963 Élysée Treaty established regular political consultation between the former wartime enemies. The 2019 Treaty of Aachen expanded that cooperation into foreign policy, defence, education, economic affairs and cross-border administration.

Joint ministerial councils and specialised institutions now connect the two countries at several levels of government. President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reinforced that approach during the Franco-German Ministerial Council in July 2026, when their governments discussed security, economic competitiveness and joint initiatives at EU level.

The German federal government described friendship with France and commitment to a united Europe as being at the heart of German foreign policy.

Mélenchon does not share the assumption that this bilateral relationship should automatically guide Europe.

His position is not simply that France and Germany disagree too often. He questions the idea that their interests are naturally aligned. From his perspective, the so-called Franco-German engine frequently produces decisions that are more compatible with German economic priorities than with French social, industrial or agricultural concerns.

Opposition to the German economic model

Mélenchon’s criticism of Germany has deep roots. In 2015, he published Le Hareng de Bismarck — Le poison allemand, or The Bismarck Herring — The German Poison.

The book attacked the admiration then shown by many French politicians for Germany’s export-led economy, labour-market reforms and budgetary policies. Its deliberately provocative language also brought accusations that legitimate criticism of German policy had crossed into national stereotyping.

His present programme is more systematic, but its underlying argument is similar.

A foreign-policy analysis published in July 2026 by the Mélenchon-linked Institut La Boétie rejects what it describes as the “ordoliberal” principles embedded in European treaties. It argues that France should be prepared to disregard EU measures when they conflict with its interpretation of the national and public interest.

Ordoliberalism is often reduced in political debate to austerity or deregulation. Germany’s social-market tradition is more complex. It gives the state an important role in creating a stable legal framework, enforcing competition and protecting monetary stability, while generally rejecting direct state control of production.

German institutions, including the Bundesbank, present the model as a combination of market efficiency, social protection and clearly defined economic rules.

Mélenchon proposes almost the opposite emphasis. He supports ecological planning, a stronger public sector, industrial protection and greater political control over investment and production.

La France Insoumise argues that strict European budget rules and market-led integration prevent governments from responding adequately to inequality, deindustrialisation and climate change.

This dispute would therefore concern more than relations between two capitals. It would reopen fundamental arguments about public debt, state aid, trade policy, competition law and the powers of EU institutions.

Defence cooperation could face the first rupture

Security may be the area where a Mélenchon presidency would bring the most immediate change.

Macron and Merz have established a framework for closer consultation on nuclear deterrence, conventional forces, long-range strike capabilities and ballistic defence. Their declarations have presented this cooperation as complementary to NATO rather than as a replacement for it.

At the Franco-German Defence and Security Council in July 2026, the two governments reaffirmed their commitment to NATO’s collective-defence principle and the mutual-assistance clause contained in the Treaty on European Union.

Mélenchon has demanded far greater scrutiny of these arrangements. He accepts that France must retain sole authority over its nuclear arsenal, but argues that agreements affecting deterrence, conventional forces and German rearmament should be examined by the French Parliament.

He has warned against commitments that could draw France into an escalation decided or shaped by other governments. In a March 2026 statement, Mélenchon argued that French nuclear doctrine must remain understandable, independent and subject to national decision-making.

His position on joint weapons programmes is equally assertive. During a visit to a Dassault Aviation factory in January, Mélenchon supported rejecting the planned Franco-German future fighter aircraft unless France retained industrial leadership.

He argued that strategic technology, intellectual property and production decisions should remain under French control.

That position has gained relevance as disagreements have deepened over the fighter component of the Future Combat Air System project. Disputes between Dassault Aviation and Airbus, differing military requirements and disagreements over industrial leadership have exposed the limits of Franco-German defence cooperation.

Leaving NATO, but not abandoning European solidarity

Mélenchon’s foreign-policy doctrine calls for France to leave NATO. It describes the alliance as an instrument of European dependence on the United States and argues that permanent military blocs restrict national sovereignty.

In January 2026, the parliamentary group of La France Insoumise formally proposed France’s withdrawal from NATO.

However, Mélenchon’s programme does not propose leaving the European Union or abandoning every European security obligation.

The Institut La Boétie analysis says France should continue to respect Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union, which requires member states to assist a country facing armed aggression.

It also proposes extending credible protection to territories associated with EU countries, citing Greenland as an example.

The result would be an unusual security model. France would remain committed to mutual assistance inside the EU while withdrawing from NATO’s established political and military structures.

For Germany and many central and eastern European countries, this would create serious uncertainty. Their defence policies place NATO, the United States and collective deterrence at the centre of European security.

A French withdrawal would not automatically destroy the alliance, but it would remove one of its nuclear powers and one of Europe’s most capable armed forces from its current command arrangements.

Spain and the Global South in Mélenchon’s European map

Mélenchon also wants to change which countries France treats as its preferred partners.

His foreign-policy analysis identifies Spain as a possible starting point for a coalition of European governments prepared to oppose war, arms transfers and violations of international law.

It praises the Spanish government’s position on Gaza and proposes measures including arms embargoes and restrictions on military access for states accused of serious breaches of international law.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is viewed by Mélenchon’s movement as a more compatible potential ally because of his disagreements with the United States and Israel and his support for a stronger European social agenda.

Beyond Europe, the programme advocates stronger relationships with French-speaking African countries, Latin America, India and China. It presents France as a global nation that should cooperate through several overlapping regional and diplomatic frameworks rather than remain tied to a single Atlantic bloc.

On China, the document rejects both confrontation and dependence. It calls for negotiated trade protection, cooperation on climate policy and industrial partnerships, while demanding reciprocity, data protection and respect for French sovereignty.

This doctrine is presented by Mélenchon’s camp as non-alignment rather than isolationism. It gives the United Nations and international law a central role and argues that France should work with different states according to the issue involved.

Critics are likely to question whether such flexibility could be maintained during a major security crisis. Cooperation with authoritarian governments would also raise questions about how consistently human rights could be defended when they conflict with strategic or economic interests.

The Franco-German relationship was already under strain

Mélenchon is not creating every disagreement between Paris and Berlin. Several have become visible under Macron and Merz.

France and Germany have differed over European borrowing, trade with China, defence procurement and the EU-Mercosur agreement.

Germany has generally viewed the Mercosur accord as an important export opportunity, while French opposition has focused heavily on agricultural competition, environmental standards and protections for European farmers.

The European Commission presents the agreement as a way to expand trade and reduce tariffs between the EU and the South American bloc. Its political impact nevertheless remains heavily contested in France.

The difficulties affecting the joint fighter project have also demonstrated that even governments strongly committed to bilateral cooperation can be divided by industrial interests and national sovereignty.

A Mélenchon presidency would turn these existing disputes into an explicit political doctrine. Instead of trying to repair the Franco-German engine after each breakdown, his government would question why that engine should continue to occupy a privileged position.

A possible second-round candidate, but not the favourite

The electoral possibility should not be confused with probability.

A July 2026 Elabe voting-intention survey placed Mélenchon between 14.5% and 16% in the first round, depending on which other candidates were included.

That result put him close to several centrist contenders in the contest for second place and confirmed his position as one of the strongest individual candidates on the French left.

The same survey showed a much more difficult second round. Marine Le Pen was projected to defeat Mélenchon comfortably, while many Socialist and centrist voters indicated that they might abstain rather than support him against the National Rally candidate.

Polls conducted months before an election are not forecasts. Candidate line-ups may change, political alliances may form and unexpected events can reshape the campaign.

Nevertheless, Mélenchon’s support is substantial enough for European governments to examine what his policies would mean in practice.

An engine that can be redirected, but not easily dismantled

Even a French president determined to reduce German influence could not erase the Franco-German relationship overnight.

It is supported by treaties, ministries, regional partnerships, cultural organisations, businesses, schools and cross-border institutions. Many forms of cooperation would continue regardless of political tension at the highest level.

Yet the French presidency holds considerable authority over defence and foreign policy. A president could block new bilateral agreements, withdraw from NATO structures, change France’s position in the European Council and refuse compromises on trade, budgets or industrial policy.

The likely outcome would therefore not be the disappearance of Franco-German relations. It would be the end of the assumption that Paris and Berlin must first agree before Europe can move.

For supporters, that could open space for more diverse coalitions among EU member states and weaken the dominance of economic policies associated with Germany.

For opponents, it could fragment European decision-making at a time of war, trade conflict and uncertainty over American security guarantees.

Mélenchon’s challenge is therefore larger than a dispute with Berlin. It asks whether Europe should continue to be organised around a privileged partnership between its two largest founding powers, or whether future European policy will be built through shifting alliances, open confrontation between economic models and a much less predictable France.

Joachim Trier finds piercing drama in the stories families tell — and the silences they preserve

Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value is an intelligent, emotionally restrained family drama about estrangement, artistic inheritance and the uneasy border between understanding another person and turning them into material. Reuniting Trier with screenwriter Eskil Vogt and actor Renate Reinsve, the film approaches reconciliation without pretending that recognition can erase harm.

The story begins with a fractured family. Nora, a successful stage actor played by Reinsve, and her younger sister Agnes, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, are brought back into contact with their absent father after their mother’s death. Gustav Borg, embodied by Stellan Skarsgård, is a once-prominent filmmaker hoping to revive his career with an autobiographical project.

Gustav offers Nora the leading role. Her refusal is more than a professional decision: it rejects his assumption that art can provide a convenient route around years of emotional neglect. He subsequently casts Rachel Kemp, a young American star played by Elle Fanning, bringing an outsider into a story whose wounds she can study but never fully possess.

The family home as an archive

Trier and Vogt build the drama around a compelling question: who has the right to shape a family’s history? Gustav sees experience as material to be organised into a film. Nora understands that the same process can strip private pain of its ownership. Agnes, positioned between them, offers another form of memory — less theatrical, but no less consequential.

The inherited house gives this conflict physical form. It is not merely a setting but an archive of absences, routines and events that different family members remember differently. The building suggests continuity, yet the people inside it have no shared account of what that continuity means. This architectural metaphor is elegant, occasionally almost too elegant, but it provides the film with a strong emotional and visual centre.

Trier’s direction has long been interested in people who can describe their feelings more readily than they can live with them. Here, filmmaking itself becomes part of that problem. Gustav’s intelligence does not excuse his failures as a parent. Nor does his desire to create something truthful guarantee that he is prepared to hear truths he cannot control.

Performances built around distance

Reinsve is well cast as a performer whose command of the stage sits beside a more private instability. The role extends her collaboration with Trier after The Worst Person in the World, but Nora is a sharper, more defended figure. Her profession makes the father’s proposal especially intrusive: he is asking not simply for forgiveness, but for access to her body and talent as instruments of his self-examination.

Skarsgård’s Gustav is conceived with comparable complexity. The film does not reduce him to a domineering patriarch or misunderstood genius. His charm, vanity and creative seriousness can coexist with cowardice. That refusal of easy moral sorting is one of the screenplay’s principal strengths.

Lilleaas gives Agnes an essential structural role as the sibling who has built a more conventional life while carrying her own version of the family history. Fanning’s Rachel is more exposed to the screenplay’s machinery. Her presence clarifies what cannot be reproduced by research or technique, but the character sometimes appears designed primarily to illuminate the Borg family rather than to exist fully beyond it.

Art cannot substitute for accountability

Sentimental Value, which received the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, belongs to a recognisable tradition of European family cinema: literate, performance-led and alert to the moral ambiguities of artistic work. Yet its most persuasive insight is not about cinema. It is about the temptation to treat expression as reparation.

Making a film about someone is not the same as listening to them. Understanding the origins of a parent’s damage does not cancel the damage passed to their children. Trier nevertheless leaves room for connection, locating hope in small acts of attention rather than in declarations or sudden absolution.

The result is a thoughtful and finely structured drama whose control can occasionally make its emotional arrangements feel overly tidy. Even so, its central conflict retains a difficult honesty. Sentimental Value recognises that families inherit more than houses and memories: they inherit competing versions of responsibility. What matters is whether those stories become another form of possession, or the beginning of a more truthful conversation.

Editorial disclosure: This assessment is based on official production information, festival documentation and publicly available excerpts rather than first-hand access to the complete film. Further production details are available from the film’s official distributor page.

Europe

A Call for evidence is now open, inviting citizens and stakeholders to share their views on the Commission’s planned actions in three key areas that matter…

Italy’s call to suspend Spain from passport-free travel turns a border emergency into an EU-wide dispute

A sharp rise in crossings into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta has triggered a diplomatic clash between Madrid and Rome, after Italy called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen area. The emergency has exposed a familiar European fault line: how to respond quickly to border pressure and deaths at sea without weakening legal safeguards for people seeking protection.

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said on Thursday that he supported closing the Schengen area to Spain, arguing that irregular and uncontrolled migration posed a national security risk. The comments came after hundreds of people reached Ceuta from Morocco by sea, many by swimming around the border, and after Spanish authorities moved to reinforce security in the enclave.

Spain summoned Italy’s ambassador in protest, according to current reporting on the Ceuta crossings. Madrid said it would deploy troops to support security efforts, while Spanish and Moroccan authorities said they had agreed to accelerate returns. No detailed timetable or figures for those returns had been made public by Friday morning.

A humanitarian emergency at Europe’s edge

The immediate facts remain stark. Spanish authorities have recovered the bodies of nine people believed to have died while trying to reach Ceuta by sea. Local authorities reported that more than 1,500 people had entered the enclave by swimming in just over a week, while officials in Ceuta warned that reception and policing capacity were under extraordinary strain.

Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two enclaves on the North African coast, are the European Union’s only land borders with Africa. That geography gives local events an outsized political effect. A surge at the border is quickly treated not only as a Spanish emergency, but as a question for the EU’s external border system, asylum procedures and relations with Morocco.

The European Commission said it had offered operational support through Frontex. Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner also said he was in contact with Spanish authorities, stressing the importance of protecting the EU’s external borders. But the legal and political response is more complicated than the call from Rome suggests.

Schengen rules leave little room for spectacle

Under the European Commission’s Schengen guidance, member states may temporarily reintroduce border controls only in exceptional cases involving a serious threat to public policy or internal security. Such measures must be necessary, proportionate, limited in time and used as a last resort.

That means Italy can make a political argument for tighter controls, but a broad suspension of Spain from Schengen is not a simple unilateral switch. The Schengen Borders Code contains mechanisms for temporary controls and, in exceptional circumstances, Council-level recommendations when the overall functioning of the area is at risk. It does not turn a dispute between two governments into an automatic exclusion procedure.

The episode nevertheless lands at a sensitive moment. Temporary internal border checks have become more common across Europe, often justified by migration pressure, security risks or organised crime. As The European Times has reported on Schengen disputes, Brussels has repeatedly argued that internal border controls should remain exceptional rather than becoming a routine substitute for shared migration management.

Rights obligations remain in force

The pressure on Ceuta is real. So are the obligations that apply when people reach European territory or seek protection. EU and international law require access to asylum procedures, protection against collective expulsion and special safeguards for children and other vulnerable people. Faster returns cannot lawfully mean rushed identification, unclear appeals or removals to unsafe situations.

That distinction matters because political language around “closures” can quickly obscure the people at the centre of the emergency. Some arrivals may have no legal right to remain. Others may have protection needs that must be assessed individually. Border authorities must also account for possible trafficking, smuggling and coercion, especially when deaths at sea and organised crossings are reported together.

For Spain, the challenge is to restore order without turning emergency management into a rights vacuum. For Italy, the challenge is to avoid turning a humanitarian and border-management crisis into a symbolic attack on free movement. And for the EU, Ceuta is another reminder that Schengen’s survival depends not only on controlling external borders, but on applying common rules with discipline, transparency and humanity.

The EU has extended its suspension of countermeasures, buying stability while keeping its trade defences ready

The European Commission has extended the suspension of EU countermeasures against US exports without setting a new expiry date, a same-day decision aimed at keeping transatlantic trade calm while preserving Brussels’ power to react if Washington fails to honour last year’s tariff framework.

The move, announced in Brussels on Friday, means EU “rebalancing measures” adopted in 2025 will remain dormant rather than taking effect next week. The Commission said the suspension would continue under close review and could be reversed if needed to defend European interests.

At stake is a package that was prepared during a volatile period in EU-US trade relations, when the prospect of steep American tariffs on European goods pushed Brussels to design countermeasures covering €93 billion of US imports into the bloc, alongside an export restriction affecting €95 million of EU exports to the United States.

By extending the pause, the Commission is signalling that the EU still wants the transatlantic tariff settlement to hold. But it is also making clear that stability is conditional, not automatic.

A Pause, Not A Surrender

The decision follows the EU-US political arrangement reached in 2025 after talks between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump at Turnberry. That framework was designed to avert a sharper tariff confrontation and to place the world’s largest bilateral trade relationship on more predictable ground.

The European Times previously reported on the EU’s legislative follow-through after the Council gave final approval to measures implementing the EU-US tariff deal in June. Friday’s decision is the defensive counterpart to that process: Brussels is keeping retaliation off the table for now, while retaining the legal machinery to bring it back.

That matters for European companies facing a trade environment shaped by uncertainty over tariffs, industrial subsidies, digital regulation and supply chains. A sudden return of EU countermeasures would affect importers, exporters and consumers across several sectors. Yet abandoning the measures outright would weaken Brussels’ leverage if the US changes course.

The Commission has therefore chosen a middle position. It gives businesses continuity, avoids a near-term escalation and leaves EU negotiators with an enforceable warning: the bloc’s restraint depends on the other side keeping its commitments.

Trade Policy With Political Weight

The 2025 joint framework included US commitments on tariff treatment for EU goods and EU commitments on market access for US industrial, seafood and agricultural products. It also reached into sensitive areas such as automobiles, energy, AI chips, defence procurement, digital trade, sustainability rules and supply-chain security.

That breadth makes the agreement more than a narrow tariff file. The EU-US framework is part trade pact, part geopolitical bargain, and part attempt to manage economic rivalry between allies at a time when both sides are trying to reindustrialise and reduce strategic dependence.

For Brussels, the risk is that predictability becomes one-sided. The EU has already moved through formal legislative channels to implement tariff concessions and preferences. Its suspension of countermeasures shows diplomatic patience, but the Commission’s review clause leaves room for a rapid response if EU exporters face renewed pressure.

For Washington, the decision offers breathing space. It avoids immediate retaliation against US goods and gives the trade framework more time to operate. But the message from Brussels is guarded: the suspension is open-ended only as long as the political bargain remains credible.

Stability, With A Warning Attached

The immediate effect is to prevent a fresh tariff clash before the previous suspension was due to expire on 6 August. That is likely to be welcomed by firms on both sides of the Atlantic that depend on stable customs treatment, especially after years of disruption caused by pandemic shocks, energy turbulence and geopolitical fragmentation.

Still, the wider lesson is that EU trade policy is becoming more conditional. Brussels is willing to lower duties, suspend countermeasures and deepen cooperation with close partners. But it is also increasingly prepared to keep defensive instruments ready when major trading relationships become politically unstable.

Friday’s decision does not end the EU-US tariff dispute. It freezes it in a more manageable form. The question now is whether that pause becomes a durable settlement, or merely the quiet interval before another round of economic pressure.

A rare replay after crashes and appeals turns a Para athletics final into a question of athlete welfare, clarity and trust

The women’s T54 1500m final at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games will be run again on Friday after a chaotic original race, a disqualification and further appeals. For Para athletics, the decision is more than a procedural footnote: it asks how major events can protect both competitive fairness and the athletes who must absorb the emotional cost of delayed rulings.

By Daniel Mercer, Sports Correspondent, The European Times

The women’s T54 1500m final was supposed to be one of Glasgow’s clearest examples of integrated Para sport taking centre stage. Instead, it has become one of the Games’ most difficult governance moments.

After a series of crashes in Wednesday’s race, officials disqualified Canada’s Nandini Sharma and later ordered the final to be rerun at 10.24am on Friday, with Sharma’s disqualification remaining in place, according to Athletics Weekly. Scotland’s Melanie Woods had crossed the line first in the original race, while England’s Ellis Kottas and Australia’s Mikaela Dingley were moved into medal positions after the disqualification.

That sequence is what makes the decision so sensitive. The issue is not simply whether a race affected by early collisions should be restored to sporting balance. It is also whether athletes should be left to believe a result has been settled, only to be told many hours later that the emotional and physical work of a final must be repeated.

Fairness after the crash

Wheelchair racing at 1500m is fast, tactical and physically exposed. Athletes compete in tight formation, where one movement across the track can affect several chairs within a second. A crash at the front of the field can alter not only medals but safety, rhythm and trust in the event itself.

In that context, a rerun can be defended as an effort to give the remaining field a fair contest. It allows athletes impeded by the incident to race for medals rather than live with an outcome shaped by collision and appeal. Yet the delayed nature of the ruling has raised an equally serious question: when should officials decide that a race is void, and how clearly should that process be communicated to athletes and teams?

Team England criticised the timing of the decision, while Team Scotland said it noted the Jury of Appeal’s ruling and would prepare its athletes for the rerun. The contrast matters. It shows that even when delegations accept the authority of officials, there can still be unease about whether the process felt clear, timely and humane.

Para sport deserves procedural strength

Glasgow has made integrated Para sport central to its compact Commonwealth Games. The programme includes six Para sport disciplines, and The European Times has reported on how that model gives disability sport a more prominent place in the public story of the Games.

That visibility brings responsibility. Integration cannot mean only shared venues, shared schedules and shared medal tables. It also requires decision-making systems that are robust enough for moments of confusion, protest and emotional pressure.

The women’s T54 1500m field included athletes with very different paths into elite competition. Glasgow’s own preview highlighted Mauritius’s Noemi Alphonse as a contender with a route through the Commonwealth’s GAPS development programme, alongside Australia’s Eliza Ault-Connell and Scotland’s Melanie Woods among the names to watch in the final. The Glasgow 2026 organisers framed the race as part of a broader story of opportunity, development and international competition.

That is why the rerun carries weight beyond the start list. These are not abstract results on a screen. They are athletes managing preparation, recovery, expectation and, in some cases, the distress of a crash or the shock of losing a provisional medal position.

The public lesson for Glasgow

Major Games depend on trust. Spectators need to believe that results are fair. Athletes need to believe that rules will be applied consistently. Officials need enough discretion to correct a damaged contest, but not so much opacity that teams are left guessing how or when final decisions are made.

Friday’s rerun may produce a cleaner race and a medal podium that feels more competitively complete. It may also leave a lesson for future events: Para sport must be given not only the platform it deserves, but the procedural care required when things go wrong in full public view.

For Glasgow, the best outcome now would be a final decided by speed, tactics and courage rather than by appeals paperwork. But the larger standard should remain after the medals are awarded. A Games that wants Para sport to be seen equally must also ensure that Para athletes are protected equally by the clarity of its rules.

Europe

Ivo Claassen joined EMA in 2018. Among many career highlights, Ivo and his team worked with the veterinary medicines network on the successful implementati…