The Debate

The UK is facing fuel shortages and in spite of placatory words and excuses from the authorities, tensions are rising. Confrontations, sometimes violent, have taken place on the forecourts of petrol stations. BP (British Petroleum) says a third of its pumps have run dry of popular grades. The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps blames the shortage on HGV drivers: the fuel cannot be delivered to the pumps quickly enough. There is a shortage of some 100,000 drivers across the UK.

Who will govern Germany? After a narrow but inconclusive win in Sunday's elections, can Olaf Scholz's centre-left SPD cobble together a three-way coalition? What next for the conservative CDU-CSU bloc after its worst ever election result? We chalk up the winners and losers in a special edition of the FRANCE 24 Debate from Berlin, in partnership with Deutsche Welle.

It's the homestretch of Germany's federal election campaign and Angela Merkel is exactly where she did not want to be: back on the campaign trail. The outgoing chancellor of 16 years, who was in her home constituency on the Baltic Sea on Tuesday, is stumping for her struggling would-be successor as head of the Christian Democrats, Armin Laschet. Other potential heirs have stumbled before him.

How serious are the superpowers in tackling the planet's climate emergency? In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Xi Jinping followed the lead of Japan and South Korea and pledged an end to China's financing of coal plants overseas. The United States put aside escalating tensions to hail the promise, but critics dismiss the announcement as low-hanging fruit coming from the nation that's home by far to the most domestic coal-fired power plants.

In his first speech as US president before the United Nations General Assembly, Joe Biden made no mention of scuttled submarine deals or French ambassadors recalled to Washington and Canberra. Instead, he talked up the ties that bind. So how artful a dodge was it? How high were the stakes in a speech where Biden also pledged he was not seeking a new Cold War? The US president called out many authoritarian regimes, but never mentioned China by name.

It's a little late for a phone call. And yet Joe Biden is offering to ring up Emmanuel Macron for the first time since the United States poached a multibillion-dollar submarine contract and sprang the surprise of an Australia-UK-US military alliance. Excluded are the French and their sizeable Indo-Pacific fleet. For all those stateside leaders who love Paris and refer to France as America's oldest ally, how much can the French trust Washington?

Back in 2016, French branded it the deal of the century. So why is the agreement to sell military-grade submarines to Australia suddenly dead in the water? Canberra has ditched the 2016 deal for the chance to buy nuclear-powered subs whose technology is made in the US, with Washington also announcing an Indo-Pacific military alliance with the Australia and the UK.

This Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen gave her State of the Union speech to the European Parliament – an update on the state of play across the 27-nation bloc. But how is Europe tackling the big issues? For instance, vaccination against Covid-19 is running at more than 70 percent. It’s a success story, but when you look at the detail, there are big variations between the member states.

In seven months from now, people across France will be heading to the polls to vote in presidential elections, which will determine whether President Emmanuel Macron becomes the country's third consecutive one-term head of state, or whether he will manage to do what his two predecessors failed to achieve and win a second term.

As France bids the fondest of farewells to a true cinema legend, we're asking: where does this leave French film and French culture? After Jean-Paul Belmondo died on Monday at the age of 88, the tributes continue to flood in. One perhaps sums him up best: an extraordinary hero of ordinary France. In other words, a man of the people who was also the biggest star of his generation.