Macron and Meloni clash over killing of French far-right activist in Lyon

A war of words has erupted between the French president and Italian prime minister over the murder of Quentin Deranque.

French President Emmanuel Macron has clashed with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni over the killing of a French far-right activist who was beaten to death by hard-left activists in Lyon.

Meloni, a conservative, said on social media on Wednesday that the killing “by groups linked to left-wing extremism … is a wound for all of Europe”. Macron responded angrily on Thursday as he spoke with reporters on a trip to India, saying that everyone should “stay in their own lane”.

“I’m always struck by how people who are nationalists, who don’t want to be bothered in their own country, are always the first ones to comment on what’s happening in other countries,” he said.

Asked if his remarks referred to Meloni, Macron replied: “You got that right.”

In response, Meloni said that Macron had misinterpreted her comments. “I’m sorry that Macron experienced it as interference,” Meloni said in a television interview with Italian news channel Sky TG24.

Deranque, 23, died after being beaten during a far-right protest in Lyon on February 12. Seven people, including an assistant to a member of parliament from the far-left France Unbowed (LFI), will face murder charges in the case, a prosecutor said on Thursday. They were among 11 arrested earlier in the week.

Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran said Jacques-Elie Favrot, an assistant to LFI lawmaker Raphael Arnault, faces charges of complicity through instigation and was put in pre-trial detention. Favrot and the other suspects deny the accusations.

The incident has jolted France’s political class and fuelled tensions between the far-right and far-left ahead of municipal elections in March and the presidential race in 2027.

Opinion polls put the far right in the lead for the presidency in 2027, when centrist President Emmanuel Macron will have to step down after the maximum two consecutive terms in office.

Macron and Meloni tensions

Macron, a pro-Europe centrist, and Meloni, one of United States President Donald Trump’s closest European allies, have sparred in the past over issues ranging from the conflict in Ukraine to trade and European policy.

In her television interview on Thursday, Meloni alluded to Italy’s so-called “Years of Lead” between 1969 and 1980, when the country suffered attacks by a radical Marxist organisation, the Red Brigades.

Several former Red Brigades members fled to France, and their fate has been a sticking point between the two countries.

“The ruling classes must [reflect] on how to combat a climate that could take us back a few decades, a history that Italy knows very well and that France knows very well, having given political asylum to the cream of the Red Brigades,” Meloni said.