Perception varies depending on whether you are French or not. In much of the Western world, the year 2022 will have rhymed with the undoubted comeback of nuclear power. Security of supply, imperative to decarbonize economies, response to the energy crisis… nuclear power ticks all the boxes and has regained its letters of nobility in the minds of leaders around the world. What more symbolic message, moreover, than that sent by the Japanese government, which has declared that it wants to relaunch its nuclear industry on a massive scale after turning away from it with the Fukushima disaster in 2011? In France, the atom will have recovered various fortunes. On the tail side, Emmanuel Macron announced last January his desire to relaunch the construction of new reactors. On the face side, the French nuclear fleet, entangled in a series of industrial difficulties, recorded in 2022 its worst historical performance in terms of production, causing de facto a certain tension on the country’s electricity supply.
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You have to have lived in a cave, probably heated to 25 degrees in winter and lit with halogen, not to have heard of it. With the outbreak in 2022 of what will remain as the worst energy crisis known to Europe, the word “sobriety” appeared on everyone’s lips. Putting on a sweater and lowering the thermostat of your radiator by one degree, delaying the start-up of your washing machine… Consuming less and better, in short, such has been the often repeated mantra ad nauseam by our leaders, NGOs, experts to save us from power cuts or a short-term gas supply disruption. But the popularity of “sobriety” will not die out with the end of the crisis. Faced with the climatic and ecological challenge, the voluntary reduction of consumption of energy, materials, land or water is considered by the IPCC as now unavoidable.
It is the popular uprising that will have marked the international news this year: in mid-September, after the death in detention of the young Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, arrested for a badly worn headscarf, the Iranian women launched a great movement of protest against the wearing of the compulsory veil, in particular by revealing oneself in public, an absolute taboo in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Men and women, often young, demonstrate every day and multiply acts of civil disobedience against the Islamic regime. They face intense repression: since the beginning of the movement, at least 500 people have been killed, including children, and nearly a hundred people risk the death penalty for having taken part in the demonstrations.
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“Koalition”. We thought this word was reserved for the German language. The term has taken on new significance since the legislative elections. The absence of an absolute majority has revived an old fantasy among some people: what if the political parties reached a government agreement on the German model? What if France embraced this unprecedented culture? The ace. No coalition has been formed. Strategies and ideological disagreements got in the way. The executive limits itself to extracting compromises text by text, in particular with Les Républicains (LR). But the hypothesis of a coalition, like a dissolution, continues to haunt this legislature.
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An initially incomprehensible acronym that has become the emblem of the State’s inability to regulate immigration, in this case to effectively send back to their country those from whom it has decided to separate. OQTF, obligation to leave French territory. The main suspect alleged in the murder of little Lola was subject to an obligation to leave the territory. Like the Tunisian who killed two young women in 2017 at Saint-Charles station in Marseille. Like the Rwandan who assassinated Father Olivier Maire in 2021. The OQTF is also the symbol of the bullying side of Emmanuel Macron, who had promised, in 2019, a 100% OQTF execution rate. However, since 2017, it has never exceeded 13%. Gérald Darmanin made it a key element of his speech by promising to apply them with the greatest severity for radical or delinquent profiles. Then, recently, by ordering the prefects to execute all OQTFs without distinction. 2023 will look like 2022: during the debate on the immigration bill, there will still be a lot of talk about them.
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Save the math! With relentless demonstrations – pointing to the drop in level, the consequences of the latest high school reform, the shortage of specialized teachers, the disaffection of girls for scientific courses… -, the defenders of the discipline had no stop sounding the alarm in 2022, listing the consequences of our shortcomings. France’s delay in this area jeopardizes our economic competitiveness. But not only that, since mathematics is essential in our daily lives today. To ignore the figures would be a very bad calculation. The awareness is there, we just have to rack our brains to solve this difficult equation.
This is the big lesson of 2022: No, inflation had not disappeared. It has even made a comeback, with price increases rising to 6.2% at the end of the year according to the latest figures from INSEE. Still, this slippage at work throughout Europe has been less marked in France than among our neighbors. France is even one of the countries where inflation is the lowest on the continent. The reason: the multiplication of “shields” that have protected the wallets of the French: rebates on gasoline prices, blocking of electricity and gas prices for individuals. To this must be added the “energy” and “purchasing power” checks distributed. All of this has been expensive, very expensive in public finances: 110 billion euros between 2021 and 2022 to protect households, but also local authorities and businesses, according to calculations by Bercy. At the beginning of 2023, this famous shield should be lowered a little since rebates on gasoline prices disappear and gas and electricity prices should rise by 15% in February… Unless, in the face of social discontent, the government invents a new term. After the shield, the umbrella?
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The scandal had marred the beginning of the year: the investigation The Gravediggers, by Victor Castanet (Grasset), had revealed serious malfunctions in private Orpea nursing homes. Isolated residents, undernourished, sometimes even left in their own excrement… The case had launched an intense discussion on the treatment of the elderly in these establishments. But private retirement homes are not the only ones struggling: public or associative nursing homes, although on a human scale, often suffer from a cruel lack of resources… and are also likely to risk closure, a almost everywhere in France.
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Very virtual threat now brandished for each major sports competition organized by an authoritarian regime. Intended to protest against the repression of the Uighurs, the “boycott” of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February was limited to the absence of official delegations from English-speaking countries (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, etc.) . At the end of August, actor Vincent Lindon launched the debate for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, denouncing “an ecological aberration” and a “non-respect of human rights”. The question of whether or not to quarantine the round ball agitated the media and commercial cafés… until kick-off on November 20. Result: the broadcaster TF1 was one of the big winners of the World Cup, with historic audiences that peaked at more than 24 million viewers for the already legendary final between France and Argentina. Or how to boycott a boycott…
Until this year, this very user-friendly outdoor cooking method could be debated for its carcinogenic risks. But, at the end of the summer, the ecofeminist Sandrine Rousseau likened a steak cooked on a barbecue to a “symbol of virility”, triggering a national controversy on the links between grilling and patriarchy. The gendered “barbeuc” has stirred up a veritable war of the left: for Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the Communist Party and assumed meat-lover, “we eat meat according to what we have in our wallet and not what we eat. ‘one has in his panties or in his underpants’.
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