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Le Divide

Le Divide: Le Divide - Egalite

Le Divide - Egalite

BBC Radio 4 - Le Divide, Le Divide - Egalite

How France is facing the challenges of liberty, equality and fraternity - today: equality.

France's motto of liberte, egalite, fraternite sums up key issues in the country. Today, Paris correspondent Lucy Williamson asks if President Macron can heal economic divides.

France's motto of "liberte, egalite, fraternite" - liberty, equality and fraternity - also sums up some of the key challenges facing the nation today. The BBC's Paris correspondent Lucy Williamson travels around the country to find out more about the issues and asks: are President Macron's policies helping to heal divisions, or make them worse?
 
France may be less unequal than many of its neighbours, but there is a deep and growing fracture between increasingly wealthy cosmopolitan elites, and the inhabitants of a "peripheral France" who say they feel left behind.  Lucy travels from Versailles in the north to the former mining town of La Grand-Combe in the south, to ask why anger there is so strong, what the gilets jaunes protests achieved, and whether President Macron has delivered on his promise to heal the economic divisions in France.

Producer: Arlene Gregorius

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How France is facing the challenges of three key issues: liberty, fraternity and equality.

BBC Paris Correspondent Lucy Williamson examines the challenges facing France and its president through three key issues - liberty, fraternity and equality.

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