A disagreement has erupted between the French president and Italian prime minister over the homicide of Quentin Deranque.
Printed On 19 Feb 2026
French President Emmanuel Macron has clashed with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni over the killing of a French far-right activist who was overwhelmed to loss of life by hard-left activists in Lyon.
Meloni, a conservative, mentioned on social media on Wednesday that the killing “by teams linked to left-wing extremism … is a wound for all of Europe”. Macron responded angrily on Thursday as he spoke with reporters on a visit to India, saying that everybody ought to “keep in their very own lane”.
“I’m all the time struck by how people who find themselves nationalists, who don’t need to be bothered in their very own nation, are all the time the primary ones to touch upon what’s occurring in different international locations,” he mentioned.
Requested if his remarks referred to Meloni, Macron replied: “You bought that proper.”
In response, Meloni mentioned that Macron had misinterpreted her feedback. “I’m sorry that Macron skilled it as interference,” Meloni mentioned in a tv interview with Italian information channel Sky TG24.
Deranque, 23, died after being overwhelmed throughout a far-right protest in Lyon on February 12. Seven folks, together with an assistant to a member of parliament from the far-left France Unbowed (LFI), will face homicide fees within the case, a prosecutor mentioned on Thursday. They have been amongst 11 arrested earlier within the week.
Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran mentioned Jacques-Elie Favrot, an assistant to LFI lawmaker Raphael Arnault, faces fees of complicity by way of instigation and was put in pre-trial detention. Favrot and the opposite suspects deny the accusations.
The incident has jolted France’s political class and fuelled tensions between the far-right and far-left forward of municipal elections in March and the presidential race in 2027.
Opinion polls put the far proper within the lead for the presidency in 2027, when centrist President Emmanuel Macron should step down after the utmost two consecutive phrases in workplace.
Macron and Meloni tensions
Macron, a pro-Europe centrist, and Meloni, one in all United States President Donald Trump’s closest European allies, have sparred up to now over points starting from the battle in Ukraine to commerce and European coverage.
In her tv interview on Thursday, Meloni alluded to Italy’s so-called “Years of Lead” between 1969 and 1980, when the nation suffered assaults by a radical Marxist organisation, the Crimson Brigades.
A number of former Crimson Brigades members fled to France, and their destiny has been a sticking level between the 2 international locations.
“The ruling courses should [reflect] on the best way to fight a local weather that would take us again a couple of a long time, a historical past that Italy is aware of very properly and that France is aware of very properly, having given political asylum to the cream of the Crimson Brigades,” Meloni mentioned.
