PRESS REVIEW: Tuesday, July 7 – While Marine Le Pen hopes for an acquittal – or a tad more leniency – over the alleged embezzlement of €4.4 million from the European Parliament, has her party already moved on? In other news, New Zealand and Australia reel after a Chinese missile test in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, the captain of the French national football team responded to the racist tirades of a Paraguayan senator.
Here in France, the verdict in Marine Le Pen's embezzlement trial will sound the starting gun for the 2027 Presidential election campaign. The front page of l'Humanité features Marine Le Pen and her second-in-command, Jordan Bardella, as the nation wonders which one will be on next year's ballot. In the eyes of the Communist newspaper, it's "6 of one, half a dozen of the other", as both are far-right hardliners. For La Croix, though, the verdict "doesn't worry the party anymore" as Bardella has developed his own popularity. Le Figaro have been tracking some key statistics about the two, their respective political histories, and electoral successes. Though her experience dwarfs his, his popularity has now surpassed hers. China's launch of a long-range missile into the pacific on Monday was hailed as a success on the front page of Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times, while the inside pages argued that this was a step on the path towards ensuring regional peace. The Australian described Beijing as "going ballistic", firing the missile just hours after the signing of a mutual defence agreement between Australia and Fiji, while the Australian deputy Prime Minister is quoted in the Herald Sun saying this "implies something about the range China is building in terms of deploying nuclear capabilities." For one commentator in the Guardian, the timing of the launch is "provocation at best, coercion at worst". And finally, after France eliminated Paraguay from the World Cup on Saturday, one Paraguayan senator took to X with overtly racist tirades against French captain Kylian Mbappé, describing him as "a colonised Cameroonian pretending to be French", saying that he was not fed breastmilk as a child but instead "suckled on coconuts" and that the "most educated people around him were chimpanzees". Kylian Mbappé's response described her as a "detestable woman, unfit for the office she holds", and said she was doing her country an injustice, as her behaviour is now eclipsing the work of their national team in their World Cup campaign. The Élysée Palace released a communiqué in response to the tirade, and Emmanuel Macron posted to X, "another goal for Kylian Mbappé. This time against racism". An article in the magazine So Foot headlined "Mbappé makes us proud to be French".
