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Letters: French rail fines are so severe even for honest mistakes
Connexion reader says his relatives have been put off visiting France
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Letters: How are hybrid cars supposed to carry a spare tyre in France?
Connexion reader says electric vehicles simply do not have enough space
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Letters: The number of cold calls to French phone is maddening
Connexion readers say that measures to prevent them are not effective
First Lady?
What – if it is not a rude question – is Brigitte Macron?
It must have been tempting for a victorious President Macron to reward his wife with an official status of First Lady but in the end he resisted and did the right thing.
In return for much hard work expected of her (greeting dignitaries, shaking hands with the public, answering hundreds of letters and being a well-dressed sidekick) she gets nothing: no job title, no official status and no salary. That is how it should be in a democracy: only those who win elections become paid employees of the state, not their family.
For the next five years she will live in the spotlight, admired, envied and criticised and always trying to strike a balance between discreet invisibility and political show-womanship. We must assume she knew what she was doing when her husband put his name forward to be head of state.