When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime .

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital Magazine NEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Sources

Notre Dame, Macron And The Imperative For National Unity

Bogged down by months of protests, the embattled French president now faces a new kind of challenge. But the disastrous cathedral fire may also be something of an opportunity.

French President Emmanuel Macron promised to rebuild Notre Dame on Monday
French President Emmanuel Macron promised to rebuild Notre Dame on Monday
Stéphane Dupont

-Analysis-

PARIS — "Nothing will be as it was before." Emmanuel Macron's five-year term as president of France has taken a completely different turn in wake of the terrible fire in the Notre Dame cathedral. Unyielding tensions gave way to a climate of national unity, the likes of which France has rarely seen.

The country is united behind its "common cathedral," as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the leftist La France Insoumise party, called it. Political quarrels have become secondary. Political parties have suspended their campaign for the European elections, and attacks on the president came to an abrupt stop.

It won't last, of course. Still, the moment is rare. At no point since Macron's election — not even in the event of terrorist attacks, or when the national soccer team won the 2018 World Cup — has France been taken by such fervor, such a surge of solidarity, such a feeling of unity. Probably because it was shaken to its core, in the deepest parts.

At no point since Macron's election has France been taken by such fervor.

This is all the more striking given that in the last two years, antagonisms rose to an eventual breaking point with the appearance, last autumn, of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests). This movement has brought to light gaping social and territorial divisions, a society fragmented as never before.

The damaged Notre Dame from a viewing platform — Photo: Marcel Kusch/ZUMA

This impromptu national unity could help Macron extricate himself from the "great national debate" debacle. The "debate" was a series of public consultations held nationwide. Opponents dismissed the process as a "masquerade" or "smokescreen" and were ready to pounce on Macron come Monday night when he was supposed to announce his first post-debate measures. Then the fire in Notre Dame broke out, postponing the announcement but also dampening, no doubt, the hostility it was expected to arouse.

At the same time, the measures must now meet an even greater requirement: to speak to as many people as possible, to reach a minimum consensus. In short, to bring people together. Will Emmanuel Macron succeed? This is the objective he seems to have set for himself. And based on what's been made public so far, the measures are likely to satisfy the broad majority and not inspire too much opposition.

They don't, at least, contain a "bitter pill" — except for the prospect of "working more" to cover costs for retirement-age people and the possible abolition of certain tax breaks for the most privileged. At any rate, the kind of tax justice the French majority demands is an income-tax reduction, not a return of the wealth tax or a property-tax increase.

The only real bone being thrown to the people who, for months now, have been denouncing the disconnection between the "elites' and the "people" is the closure of the National School of Administration. Not enough to break the national unity that emerged from Monday night's tragedy.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Green

A DNA Bank To Save Jaguars Threatened By Mexico’s Mega Rail Project

A government mega-project could push the country’s big cats closer to extinction — an outcome that would have devastating ripple effects on the local ecosystem.

A DNA Bank To Save Jaguars Threatened By Mexico’s Mega Rail Project

A jaguar resting at the Jaguar Sanctuary in Tlacolula de Matamoros, Mexico.

Ena Aguilar Peláez

TLACOLULA DE MATAMOROS — Lamanai and Cachicamo play among the trees near a man-made pond. Roaring and bounding, they behave like any other 3-year-old jaguars. Besides the two of them, the only other sounds come from birds and bugs singing their songs in the forest they call home.

The place where these felines live has been the same almost since their birth: a wildlife simulator, which recreates their habitat and limits contact with humans, at the Jaguar Sanctuary, a center that works to protect and safeguard this endangered species. Since entering this space in 2021, Lamanai and Cachicamo have been monitored by experts. Currently, they are the only specimens in a gene-bank program designed to conserve the jaguar species.

For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.

The program began in 2017 to track jaguar populations and their health, and it was expanded in 2023 with the creation of a backup population program to increase the number of these felines in Mexico. In 2018, there were about 4,800 specimens in the country, according to a census coordinated by the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute of Ecology. These programs are increasingly urgent due to new highways and other government projects, like Tren Maya, which bring human construction and infrastructure to the big cats’ habitat, reducing their hunting territory and genetic variability, experts say.

Keep reading...Show less

The latest