🇫🇷Champions, Tariffs, and Macron challenges Xi Jinping
Paris Saint-Germain win Champions League, 'What a week' - Blocks on Tariffs, Catalan and Budapest Pride, Emmanuel Macron challenges Xi Jinping and Israel, while France keeps AA- debt rating
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This week
⚽Paris Saint-Germain win Champions League
🎤What a week - Blocks on Tariffs, Catalan and Budapest Pride
🇨🇳Emmanuel Macron challenges Xi Jinping and Israel
🏦France keeps AA- debt rating
⚽Paris Saint-Germain win Champions League
So, let’s start with some good news for French football this week: the Parisian football team, Paris Saint-Germain, has won one of the greatest prizes in football: the UEFA Champions League.
PSG were known as a team that had spent huge amounts of money on some of the best talent in the game, and who had continuously been let down despite their wealthy Qatari owners, who had bought the club in 2011 for €100 million, and who had invested around €1.3 billion since then.
But, having reduced their reliance on major stars like Mbappe, Neymar, and Messi, and with coach Luis Enrique having forced a focus on developing younger talent to be promoted through the club, PSG finally achieved their long-held goal after beating Inter Milan 5-0.
Paris Saint-German are now the first French team to hold a ‘continental treble’: winning their national league, their national cup, and the European championships.
They have also become only the second French team to win a European Championship, with only Olympique de Marseille having done so in 1993, beating AC Milan 1-0.
Naturally, the fans went wild, and celebrations went on throughout the night, but of course, as it so happens, these celebrations went a little too far in many places.
Two deaths took place on the side-lines of the event, with one young 17-year-old man being stabbed to death in Dax, whilst another individual who was driving a scooter was hit by a car and died due to his injuries.
There were also around 192 injuries, including public services like firefighters, with around 559 arrests taking place - 491 in Paris - and 320 people being held in custody by the police - 254 in Paris.
But despite the sad following up from the events, the Capital nevertheless was able to celebrate a new sporting victory which will hopefully serve as a positive example and an inspiration to people in the capital, and which once again soothes our historic pain over the 2006 World Cup.
🎤What a week - Blocks on Tariffs, Catalan and Budapest Pride
Moving on to a quick reminder: this week I sat down once again with friend of
, , to discuss several major things that happened this week, and to have a minor not-very-philosophical debate on the difference between Nationalism and Patriotism, whilst complaining about the lack of leadership at the European level.The writer of
and I chatted about:The on-off-on again US Tariff court rulings
The European Council blocking Spanish regional languages and giving Pedro Sanchez a political headache
Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban's Budapest pride ban, and the pathetically weak response from the Commission
And Ursula von der Leyen's Aachen speech on European geopolitics
What a week - Blocks on Tariffs, Catalan and Budapest Pride
Dave and Julien discuss the messy US Tariff court rulings, the Council blocking Spanish regional languages, Orban's Budapest pride ban, and Von der Leyen's Aachen speech
Let us know what you think! and remember to subscribe
🇨🇳Emmanuel Macron challenges Xi Jinping and Israel
This week saw French President Emmanuel Maacron traveling to Singapore for the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, the primary Asian defence and security forum, where he made several strong statements
As you guys probably remember from two years ago, there was a much-criticised interview where one publication (coughPoliticocough) mistranslated and mis-represented
Naturally, your favourite publication translated the entire interview themselves and published an explainer:
Has Emmanuel Macron abandoned Taiwan?
Last week saw French President Emmanuel Macron Travel to China alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in an attempt to work on EU-China relations.
Naturally, this set tongues wagging immediately regarding the fool’s errand that it was, with many saying that this was entirely pointless and would achieve nothing, with some even claiming that he was doing this to distract from domestic problems.
Firstly, you’re welcome, secondly, this is an interview that has dogged Macron, with many accusing him of being shy in the fact of Chinese power, and kow-towing to the likely next geopolitical hegemon in the post-Trump America era.
While there will be a longer analysis of what happened here on
, let’s take a quick look at this event, as it seems that he may have put these criticisms to bed this week throughout his trip around Asia, and notably the strong comments he made during the IISS event on the need to build “new alliances”, based the rule of law, in Asia:"We are facing the challenge of revisionist countries that want to impose, in the name of spheres of influence, spheres of coercion … let's build a new positive alliance between Europe and Asia, based on our common standards, on our common principles"
Arguing that this must be done to avoid becoming “collateral victims [of] decisions taken by superpowers”, Macron was clearly pointing at the increasingly dangerous behaviour of the United States of America and China.
Macron was also going back to one of his favourite topics: the fact that any ongoing reliance on the hegemons was a foolhardy endeavour in the modern day.
He also used the opportunity to tackle the ongoing inaction on the crisis occurring in Gaza, stating that if the West “abandons Gaza … [and] lets Israel do it,” then the West would effectively be “losing all credibility with the rest of the world.”
He also made it clear that the same was at stake in Ukraine, and that any space given to the Russian invaders would open pandoras box:
“If we consider that Russia can be allowed to seize part of the territory of Ukraine without restriction, without constraint, without reaction from the world order, what will be said about what could happen in Taiwan?”
It was here that Macron threw down the gauntlet to Beijing, and made a comment that would be taken as an alarming threat by Chinese President Xi Jinping:
"If China does not want NATO to be involved in Southeast Asia or Asia, it must clearly prevent North Korea from being involved on European soil"
Now, to temporarily cut a long-story short: China feels fairly comfortable geopolitically and militarily when it comes to a short-term conflict over Taiwan, with the Taiwanese military’s main strategic goal being to delay and hamstring a potential Chinese invasion long-enough for it’s allies, such as the USA and Japan to come to it’s aid.
The problem right now is that Taiwan isn’t necessarily sure that anybody will come, with Donald Trump’s MAGA America being clear that they are moving towards an isolationist foreign policy, and are no longer interested in supporting their allies.
Add to this that, without America’s promised support and the dependence that the USA pushed on its allies, many of Taiwan’s allies would be hesitant to jump into a protracted war without the domestic industrial framework to produce the equipment and munitions they need.
However, China’s calculation changes fairly quickly if the European Union, with an increasingly aggressive focus on European Strategic Autonomy and building a European Military Industrial Complex, pivots to Asia and begins creating a network of alliances with countries such as Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
But, we’ll explore that later this week, so make sure to drop your email below and subscribe!
🏦France keeps AA- debt rating
To cap off the week, Prime Minister François Bayrou has received some good news this week as he is working on the 2026 budget, and patching up a €40 billion hole in French finances.
Friday 30 May saw Standard & Poor’s (S&P) announcing that, for the time being, it was maintaining the “double A” debt rating for France, avoiding a downgrading that would have hit confidence in the French state.
With S&P Global having been the first to demote the French debt rating from it’s ‘AAA’ rating back in 2012, there was a major risk of yet another demotion taking place this month, which would have proven damaging to the French economy.
The reason for this is that many investment funds have limits on government bonds that they can hold, with the threshold being the “double A” rating. If France had been demoted, we could have seen an offloading of French government bonds that could have given Prime Minister Bayrou an additional headache.
And yet, he’s far from being out of the woods.
With ongoing political instability, the looming threat of new French legislative elections once the constitutional limit runs out in early July, and the ongoing challenge of fixing and reinvigorating a slowing French economy, the 2025 and 2026 financial years will be crucial to Bayrou’s legacy.
And nobody quite knows where he will find the €40 billion in savings in the 2026 budget that he needs in order to bring the deficit down to 4.6% next year, and the total €100 billion that he wants to save over the next five years.
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Dispatch is always interesting and informative.
PSQ's victory, like Man City's, is only a victory for oil money, authoritarianism and sports washing.
It is not a matter for celebration but for shame.