Élysée Searched as Attal Opens 2027 Race

The Parquet National Financier confirmed Friday that investigators had entered the Élysée Palace on May 21 as part of a corruption probe into the awarding of contracts for Pantheon induction ceremonies — the first search of the presidency since investigators entered during the 2018 Benalla affair in Macron's first term. The financial prosecutor's office said the operation was "preceded by institutional consultations to ensure they could proceed"; April's attempt had been rebuffed on grounds of the constitutional inviolability of the presidency under Article 67. The presidency authorised this round after judging the safeguards adequate, stressing that the procedure does not target Emmanuel Macron personally. The investigation, opened in October 2025 by financial prosecutor Pascal Prache, focuses on more than two decades of Pantheon-induction contracts awarded to Shortcut Events by the Centre des monuments nationaux until 2024, at an estimated €2 million per ceremony according to Le Canard Enchaîné. The firm's last engagement was the 2024 induction of Resistance fighter Missak Manouchian, preceded by Joséphine Baker's 2021 transfer to the mausoleum.

Hours earlier, the day's other defining moment played out in the rural commune of Mur-de-Barrez in Aveyron, where 37-year-old former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal — now head of Macron's Renaissance party — declared his candidacy for the 2027 presidential election. Attal told supporters he wanted to restore a promise of individual and national "elevation" for France; the announcement enters him into a crowded centre-right field that already includes fellow former PM Édouard Philippe, while National Rally leader Jordan Bardella currently leads first-round polls at around 34 percent. The two stories together describe the Macron era's structural transition: the palace exposed to judicial scrutiny on the same day its political heir formally opens the race to inherit it.

Macron himself used the day to push two further moves. At a quantum-computing event in Bruyères-le-Châtel, he called on the European Union to adopt trade-defence powers modelled on the U.S. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, arguing the bloc must be able to react when its sovereignty is threatened by foreign competition. The European Commission is preparing a trade-defence package ahead of a strategy debate on China next Friday and an EU leaders' summit in mid-June. Separately, on the 25th anniversary of the Taubira Law that recognised slavery as a crime against humanity, Macron endorsed the repeal of the Code Noir — the royal decrees that codified slavery in the French colonies — and opened a debate on reparations for France's role in the transatlantic slave trade. He warned against "false promises," acknowledged that the harm could never be fully repaired, and announced a joint research project with Ghana on slavery's long-term effects and policy recommendations.

Beyond the political news cycle, the day's security backdrop hardened in two directions. The aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its strike group transited the Suez Canal and is now prepositioned near the Gulf of Aden, close to the Strait of Hormuz, for a potential multinational maritime-security mission tied to the ongoing Iran war — confirming earlier French commitments to the U.S.-led response. And ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, published an analysis recasting Russia's "shadow fleet" of sanctioned-oil tankers as a flexible hybrid-warfare platform: Russian Navy vessels are now escorting tankers through the Baltic Sea and the English Channel, and Spain has reported a fivefold increase in shadow-fleet activity off the Canary Islands. The fleet, in ACLED's framing, is no longer just a sanctions-evasion tool but an infrastructure for espionage, intimidation and grey-zone operations sitting at France's northern maritime approaches.