The Debate

A death spiral in Gaza with no end in sight; a Middle East peace process that’s been moribund for years. What’s the point of talking solutions when not even a truce is in sight? In New York next week, France is slated to co-chair with Saudi Arabia what's officially billed as a "UN International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution".

Emmanuel Macron had strongly suggested he would recognise a Palestinian state at the event. Is that still the case? We ask about the pressure on the French president to dial it back. With the US silent as Israel pounds Gaza and expands illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, what does recognising Palestinian statehood change in practice?

Watch more'The two-state solution is going to happen': Israel’s Olmert and ex-Palestinian FM Qudwa

On Thursday, Paris will host a springboard event for New York. We hear from civil society participants at a conference hosted by the Paris Peace Forum. How to find common ground to proposals that can win over a population where positions have hardened for so long?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Aurore Laborie and Ilayda Habip. 

How to stop our needless overconsumption of cheaper and cheaper clothes that pollute the planet? France's Senate has just passed a bill to curb advertising and tax pollution of fast fashion, with lawmakers even talking up the distinction of ultra-fast fashion: garments made in a hurry – increasingly using polyester and other polluting plastics – that are shipped at warp speed by plane and fall apart after only a few washes.   

But has the fast fashion bill been partially stripped bare? The new version seems to include a carve-out for European giants that peddle cheap clothes, with the focus mostly now on China. 

Europeans, like the Trump administration, are in fact working to close the tax loophole on the kind of small parcels that go out by the millions from small garment factories in China. And while the likes of Shein and Temu enrol big names to lobby on their behalf, including a former European commissioner and a former interior minister of Emmanuel Macron, we ask who's winning the hearts and minds of consumers in this battle over an industry that represents up to 10 percent of humanity's carbon footprint.  

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Aurore Laborie and Ilayda Habip.

The United States Marine Corps, the country's main foreign expedition force, has been deployed to Los Angeles – this on top of the US president enrolling the National Guard in a show of force against pockets of violent protest against the arrest of undocumented immigrants at their place of work.

It's a fight that Donald Trump wanted to pick for a long time, going over the head of the Democratic governor of California just days before another first: a US president staging a military parade in Washington on his birthday. In his first term, Trump's Republican Party was the party of states' rights, regularly accusing the federal government of overreach. How did it all change so fast?

A nation with a determined far right that's up against a splintered mainstream sounds a lot like the situation in France, where the next presidential election is in two years' time. As Marine Le Pen's party harks back to its trademark anti-immigrant rhetoric – a topic where a majority of US citizens back Trump – what lessons can be drawn from the seemingly fast-changing form of democracy in America?

Produced by François Picard, Maya Yataghene, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Alessandro Xenos.

Overheated and overfished: an SOS for oceans under duress is being sent from a UN summit in Nice. But try telling that to those who advocate deep-sea drilling for precious metals. In a world hungry for the minerals that power our batteries and connect our computers, the United States but also China, India, Japan, Norway and more are seriously studying whether science fiction can become reality.

We ask about the actual feasibility of deep-sea mining and the competing narratives at play, what with the US boycotting the United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice and a paltry 32 nations so far ratifying the UN’s High Seas Treaty. How to protect the two-thirds of our planet’s surface that belong to both everyone and no one?

Watch moreNorway lured by deep-sea mining for rare metals

On that score, there's no need to drill when you hit rock bottom. Even areas protected on paper remain vulnerable to large fishing trawlers that literally rake the seabed, killing both fish and plant life essential for our planet. What can be done before it's too late?

Watch moreKenyan fishermen under pressure as foreign trawlers threaten waters

Produced by François Picard, Andrew Hilliar, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip.

What have learned? What have we enacted in the six years since Christchurch and the far-right fanatic who livestreamed his own mass shooting in a New Zealand mosque?

Here in France, outrage is growing over the 53-year-old man who posted five times to Facebook before and after killing his Tunisian neighbour and who also targeted two Kurdish asylum seekers. Posts included a call to "go get them wherever they are" and to vote for Marine Le Pen's National Rally. It was enough for it be treated as a terror case and for the conservative right-wing interior minister to make the trip to the French Riviera town of Puget-sur-Argens.

How much of the blame for the real-life attack goes to the virtual world? As US tech platforms downsize fact-checking and content moderation on their sites, the European Union finds itself in a bind. Its Digital Services Act needs enforcement and reinforcement, say anti-racism advocates. 

But the bloc is also locked in wide-ranging trade negotiations with a United States whose vice president clearly states that Europe's biggest challenge is "the threat within" of a supposed assault on free speech and censorship of MAGA-world ideas.

Does Europe have what it takes to define and defend the free exchange of ideas, while preventing the phones in our pockets from becoming bullhorns for hate?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Aurore Laborie and Ilayda Habip.

Ukraine's "no surrender" attitude is on display, what with daring drone raids deep in Russian territory last weekend and a new attack on the Kerch Strait bridge that links Moscow-occupied Crimea to the mainland. These are spectacular shows, but can outgunned and outnumbered Kyiv keep it up? 

The question is particularly timely with the US defence secretary skipping a meeting of the NATO support group on Ukraine this Wednesday. The US, for now, is still sharing intelligence and disbursing military aid allotted to Kyiv by the previous administration. But for how much longer?

We ask the question ahead of the NATO summit later this month in the Netherlands, and ahead of Thursday’s Oval Office initiation for new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. What will the likes of Germany and France do if Trump loses interest entirely in Europe's defence and Ukraine's fate?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Aurore Laborie and Ilayda Habip.

Can South Korea turn the page on its most turbulent time since democracy was installed? An election held this Tuesday looks like a landslide victory for the Democratic Party of Lee Jae-myung. What is his agenda? Where will he take South Korea? Will he be able to bring stability to the East Asian economic powerhouse that was plunged into doubt and confusion last December with a declaration of martial law by soon-deposed leader Yoon Suk Yeol?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

Why did an EU success story vote for a pro-Trump candidate? Karol Nawrocki has been narrowly elected Polish president, in part thanks to a first-round surge by candidates further to the right. Why has a nation that's a net recipient of EU funding, one that shares a border with Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, turned its back on Brussels? 

We ask if time's soon up for the swing of two years ago in favour of the reformist coalition led by centre-right Prime Minister Donald Tusk and draw conclusions from the defeat of Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. Could there even be a snap general election?

What about that ongoing battle over the independence of the courts, culture war issues like abortion and attitudes towards Ukraine and European defence? Historical rivalries with Kyiv were talked up on the campaign trail. But historical rivalries are even greater with Moscow. And just as the likes of Germany and France scramble to level up on defence, Sunday's election winner clearly believes that his backers in Washington will maintain the 10,000 US troops stationed in Poland. Is that a sure bet? Can Poland be both Atlanticist and Eurosceptic? 

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Théophile Vareille, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

A fortnight after Romania, Poland is holding a presidential run-off where the pro-EU candidate faces uncertain odds. On Sunday, Warsaw's liberal mayor Rafał Trzaskowski will need the kind of boost in turnout that propelled his counterpart from Bucharest to victory. Nicoşur Dan came to campaign last weekend for Trzaskowski, the candidate from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Civic Platform party.

Trzaskowski is not the only one with celebrity endorsements. US President Donald Trump is dispatching his Director of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to stump for nationalist right-wing candidate Karol Nawrocki. The Law and Justice party of Poland's outgoing president Andrzej Duda hopes to rally the 20 percent of voters who veered further to the right in the first round. In a nation where living standards have skyrocketed since joining the EU two decades ago, why are so many citizens eager to elect Eurosceptics?

Would a Nawrocki win call time after just one year on the efforts of Tusk to undo PiS's contentious rule of law reforms? Currently, the former president of the European Council has positioned himself at the heart of Brussels policymaking. Looking ahead, which direction do Poles want?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

The man who coined the term "soft power" recently died. It’s ironic that Joseph Nye taught at Harvard University, the institution that's in the eye of the storm of the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students. A court has now stopped the US government from banning foreign student enrolment at the country's most elite university, but more suspensions of federal funding are in the works.

Now comes a broader move. The US State Department is pausing visa applications for the country's more than 1 million foreign students, this "in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting". In a land that prides itself on its First Amendment of the Constitution guaranteeing free speech, who decides when posting a picture of a Palestinian flag constitutes a national security threat?

Are we seeing a passing fancy or the true decline of US soft power? As Europeans try to lure students and researchers to migrate to these shores, as the UK moves towards rejoining the Erasmus foreign student exchange programme that the pro-Brexit Conservatives quit, we ask what the pushback against foreign students and the use of social media posts as evidence for the prosecution say about our times and the free flow of ideas and information.

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gniganti, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Alessandro Xenos.