The Orpea group Ehpad scandal
An Orpea retirement home in Reze near Nantes, western France, on February 10, 2022. © AFP
The year 2022 begins in France with a scandal of abuse of the elderly with the publication, on January 26, of a book-investigation by Victor Castanet, "Les Fossoyeurs" (ed. Fayard).
The testimonies and documents collected by the journalist mention in particular rationing of food and hygiene products to the detriment of the elderly cared for in the structures of Orpea, a group which manages nearly 1,200 establishments in Europe and Latin America. .
The political power quickly took hold of the affair: the Minister Delegate in charge of Autonomy, Brigitte Bourguignon, announced the opening of an administrative inquiry the very day of the publication of the book, while the National Assembly conducted hearings, in particular those of the CEO of the Orpea group and its managing director France, in February.
The State ends up filing a complaint on March 26 on the basis of article 40 of the code of criminal procedure, which obliges any authority to report criminal acts of which it becomes aware, and also requests the reimbursement of the overpayment of public grants. , for an amount of 55.8 million euros.
A sum long disputed by Orpea, but which will finally be reimbursed in full, announced the group in November.
There now remain the court cases, which are still ongoing.
More than fifty complaints from families of residents of nursing homes have been filed, but also complaints of union discrimination, obstacles to union rights and forgery and use of forgery.
War in Ukraine and purchasing power, central themes of the presidential campaign
The 2022 presidential candidates: Nathalie Artaud, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot, Jean Lassalle, Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Valérie Pécresse, Philippe Poutou, Fabien Roussel and Éric Zemmour.
© France 24
They were more than forty to want to present themselves to the supreme magistracy, but they are finally twelve on the starting line, on March 4, after having validated their 500 sponsorships: Nathalie Arthaud (Lutte Ouvrière), Nicolas Dupont-Aignan ( Debout la France), Anne Hidalgo (Socialist Party), Yannick Jadot (Europe Ecology-The Greens), Jean Lassalle (Resist!), Marine Le Pen (National Rally), Emmanuel Macron (The Republic on the move), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France insoumise), Valérie Pécresse (Les Républicains), Philippe Poutou (New Anti-Capitalist Party), Fabien Roussel (French Communist Party) and Éric Zemmour (Reconquest!).
The French presidential campaign is marked by the war in Ukraine, with unprecedented debates on France's foreign policy and in particular its place within NATO.
The president-candidate, Emmanuel Macron, takes the opportunity to play the card of a head of state at work on the diplomatic front and too busy to campaign, contenting himself with unveiling an ersatz program a few weeks before the first round and only having one meeting, on April 2, at La Défense Arena, in the inner suburbs of Paris.
The question of purchasing power, with inflation in the background, is the other major theme favored by the French and the candidates.
On the other hand, the environment, and in particular the question of global warming, are struggling to impose themselves in the debates, to the great displeasure of the NGOs.
Scenes of chaos at the Stade de France
Liverpool supporters try to cope with tear gas to enter the Stade de France for the Champions League final, in Saint-Denis, May 28, 2022. © Fernando Kallas, Reuters
On May 28, many spectators left shocked by the clashes between supporters and police on the sidelines of the Champions League final at the Stade de France, near Paris.
Extremely rare in the world of football, the match scheduled for 9 p.m. starts thirty-six minutes late due to incidents around the stadium.
Supporters tried to climb the gates of the enclosure to force entry.
Clashes then broke out, with the police sometimes using tear gas.
The images go around the world, giving a negative image of France.
Above all, just over a year from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, they cast doubt on the ability of the French authorities to organize major sporting events on its territory.
After several weeks of investigation, the Senate issued a report in July.
Senator Laurent Lafon, president of the culture committee, evokes a "sequence of malfunctions" and "failures" both "in the execution" and in the "preparation" of the event.
Emmanuel Macron re-elected for five years
Emmanuel Macron at the Champ-de-Mars, in Paris, after the announcement of the results of the second round of the presidential election, April 24, 2022. © Bertrand Guay, AFP
Emmanuel Macron is re-elected President of the Republic on April 24, winning in the second round, as in 2017, against the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen (58.55% of the vote against 41.45% for his opponent) .
But the "republican front" to block the far right has less motivated French people who appear more divided than ever.
In the first round, on April 10, the "useful vote" had played out with a distribution of the bulk of the votes over three candidates: Emmanuel Macron (27.85%), Marine Le Pen (23.15%) and Jean -Luc Melenchon (21.95%).
The fourth man, Éric Zemmour, found himself relegated far behind with 7.07% of the vote.
All the other candidates had finished below the fateful 5% bar synonymous with reimbursement of campaign expenses, including LR candidate Valérie Pécresse (4.78%), EELV candidate Yannick Jadot (4.63%) and PS candidate Anne Hidalgo (1.74%).
Another sign of voter unease: 26.31% of them abstain from voting in the first round and 28.01% in the second round.
On May 16, Emmanuel Macron appoints Elisabeth Borne to Matignon.
The new Prime Minister takes over from Jean Castex with a government marked by continuity.
Many ministers are thus maintained in their post (Bruno Le Maire in the Economy, Gérald Darmanin in the Interior, Éric Dupond-Moretti in Justice, etc.).
The legislative gives birth to a relative majority for the presidential camp
The figure of the Nupes, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Prime Minister, Élizabeth Borne, and the president of the RN, Marine Le Pen.
© AFP
The legislative elections give the National Assembly, on the evening of the second round on June 19, an unprecedented representation with a presidential majority deprived of an absolute majority (250 deputies), an extreme right stronger than ever (88 deputies) and a left which is progressing thanks to the union (150 deputies).
The legislative campaign confirms what the presidential election had shown: Emmanuel Macron was re-elected without passion and the French do not want to give him full powers.
Interest in these elections is particularly driven by the historic alliance between the various left-wing forces: for the first time, rebels, communists, socialists and ecologists campaigned on a common program within the New Popular, Ecological and social (Nupes).
But their hopes of forcing cohabitation are notably thwarted by the historic results of the National Rally (RN) which, with 88 deputies, becomes the first opposition group to Renaissance (ex-LREM) at the Palais Bourbon – the deputies of Nupes, certainly more numerous, are in fact divided into four groups.
Attacks of November 13: Salah Abdeslam sentenced to life imprisonment
Salah Abdeslam, the main accused, on November 2, 2021, in court in Paris.
© Benoit PEYRUCQ / AFP
After ten months of hearing, Salah Abdeslam, considered the only member still alive of the Islamist commandos of November 13, 2015, was sentenced on June 29 to incompressible life imprisonment by the special Assize Court of Paris.
A total of 19 of the 20 defendants are found guilty on all counts against them.
The defense lawyers, divided in the face of sentences deemed both severe but also below the prosecution's requisitions, had warned the court, in their pleadings, against the temptation of "exceptional justice" guided by emotion, more than six years after that night of terror at the Stade de France, on the terraces of eastern Paris and at the Bataclan.
"The sentences are quite heavy. They won't get out of prison right away. We're going to enjoy it, I feel a lot of relief. Ten months of trial, it helps to rebuild. It's over, it's going to leave a void", comments Sophie, a survivor of the Bataclan, at the exit of the courtroom, with tears in her eyes.
Hottest year ever recorded in France
A firefighter facing the fires in Gironde, July 17, 2022, in the south-west of France.
© Thibaud Moritz, AFP
The announcement came very early.
As of November 30, already, the Météo-France services could certify that the year 2022 would beat the 2020 heat record of 14.07 degrees Celsius, with an average temperature a priori between 14.2 and 14.6 degrees.
The fault, in particular, of an extraordinary summer marked by three heat waves (15 to 19 June, 12 to 25 July and 31 July to 13 August), i.e. a record of 33 days.
These were accompanied by numerous extreme events, such as a "historic drought", forest fires - particularly in Gironde and in regions usually little or not prone to this type of phenomenon such as Brittany -, ocean heat waves in the Mediterranean and severe thunderstorms – like the one that killed five people in Corsica on August 18.
Annual rainfall is expected to show an average deficit of 15 to 25% compared to normal, with two record months in May (60% deficit) and July (-85%), which are the driest since the start of measurements in 1959. The driest year in France remained 1989, with a deficit of 25%.
The French face a surge in inflation
To support purchasing power, the government has implemented several support measures.
© Christophe Simon, AFP
Like all the economies of the world, France is affected by the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the rise in energy prices.
In July 2022, inflation reached 6.1% over one year, according to INSEE, a level not seen since 1985. To help the French cope with rising prices, the government passed a law during the summer in favor of purchasing power, the first part of which represents 20 billion euros in expenditure.
The text provides in particular for a 4% increase in retirement pensions, family allowances, social minima and the activity bonus.
Personalized housing assistance is increased by 3.5%.
The "Macron bonus" created in 2019, which employers can pay to their employees once a year and which is exempt from social security contributions, is replaced by the value-sharing bonus with a ceiling increased to 3,000 euros.
Self-employed workers benefit from a reduction in their social security contributions.
Another section of measures, amounting to 44 billion euros, was voted in the process to finance the renationalisation of EDF, the continuation of the tariff shield on energy and the fuel rebate, as well as the revaluation of 3.5% of the index point for civil servants.
Many shortages in public services
Hospital staff demonstrate in Bordeaux, in the south-west of France, to denounce the lack of staff and poor working conditions, June 7, 2022. © Philippe Lopez, AFP
In France, there were 4,000 teachers missing at the start of the school year in September out of the 850,000 positions to be filled.
The phenomenon is not new, but is getting worse year after year.
The sign, according to the unions, of the lack of attraction for a profession which is exercised in increasingly difficult conditions and with an increasingly low salary.
The decline in the attractiveness of the public service also concerns the hospital environment.
Caregivers, especially in emergency departments, are missing.
At the end of May, at least 120 services were forced to limit their activity or were preparing for it, according to a count by the Samu-Urgences de France association.
Psychiatry is also affected with more than 1,000 unfilled positions.
And in the fall, the shortage is also felt in pediatric wards, overheated due to the bronchiolitis epidemic, with babies treated in hospital corridors or sent home.
Transport is also in crisis with a limited number of coach, bus, tram and metro drivers.
Regional authorities estimate the number of vacancies at nearly 5,000.
Finally, nurseries are forced to recruit people who have not been trained in the care of young children.
The figure of 10,000 unfilled positions is put forward in a report by the National Family Allowance Fund (CNAF) published in July.
Strike at refineries causes fuel shortages
A TotalEnergies service station stormed at the start of the strike, on October 5, in Palavas-les-Flots, in the south of France.
© Pascal Guyot, AFP
In an inflationary context, the employees of the refineries of TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil went on strike at the end of September to obtain salary increases, leading to fuel shortages in service stations throughout France.
Highlighting the record results of TotalEnergies in 2021 and the increase in the remuneration of their boss, Patrick Pouyanné, which stands at nearly 6 million euros, the strikers are demanding a 10% increase, which the direction.
Faced with the deadlock, the government was forced to intervene by asking TotalEnergies to make an effort, then by requisitioning striking employees.
The movement ends on November 2 in the last refinery on strike, in Gonfreville-l'Orcher, near Le Havre, after an agreement reached between management and the unions on an increase of between 7% and 10%.
At the National Assembly, the 49.3 used with a vengeance
French Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, on October 19, 2022, announcing to the National Assembly the use of 49-3 to pass the 2023 Finance Bill. © Emmanuel Dunand, AFP
While the law in favor of purchasing power was able to be adopted thanks to the support of opposition MPs, the debates on the 2023 finance bill and the 2023 social security finance bill are more complicated for the presidential camp and its relative majority.
The Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, therefore activated, for the first time on October 19, article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows her to have a text adopted without a vote of the National Assembly.
This article can only be used once per parliamentary session, with the exception of budgetary texts, for which there is no limit.
However, with the back and forth between the Assembly and the Senate, and the different parts of the bills to be examined (expenditures and revenues), the opportunities are numerous.
Thus, in less than two months, the head of government has used a total of ten 49.3s – the last having been drawn on December 15.
Nice attack: the eight defendants sentenced to two to eighteen years in prison
This court sketch shows the defendants on the first day of the trial, September 5, 2022 © Benoît Peyrucq, AFP
After more than three months of hearing, the special assize court of Paris pronounced on December 13 sentences of two to eighteen years in prison against the eight people - seven men and a woman - judged at the trial of the Nice attack, which killed 86 people on July 14, 2016 on the Promenade des Anglais.
The five professional magistrates who make it up found guilty the eight defendants, relatives of the driver of the ram truck who had driven into the crowd or people tried for arms trafficking, and retained the qualification of association of terrorist criminals against two of them.
None of the defendants was accused of having played a leading role in the attack.
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