{"id":16771,"date":"2026-05-20T21:06:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/16771\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T21:06:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:06:29","slug":"french-authorities-probe-israeli-firms-alleged-interference-in-local-elections-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/16771\/","title":{"rendered":"French authorities probe Israeli firm\u2019s alleged interference in local elections\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Her remarks came after reports from Reuters, Haaretz and Lib\u00e9ration that France Unbowed lawmaker Fran\u00e7ois Piquemal, who advanced to the runoff in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/toulouse-election-france-airbus-business-concerns\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Toulouse mayoral race<\/a> but lost in the second round, was among those targeted.<\/p>\n<p>The allegations come on the heels of accusations by Slovenian law enforcement earlier this year that an Israeli private intelligence firm had helped leak recordings designed to influence the election in Slovenia <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/black-cube-leak-tape-corruption-israel-spy-firm-slovenia-election\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Israeli Embassy in Paris did not respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.<\/p>\n<p>Piquemal, who was arrested by Israeli authorities last year alongside activist Greta Thunberg on a so-called Freedom Flotilla attempting to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza, said Wednesday he would try to have the results of the second round of the Toulouse race invalidated over the alleged foreign interference.<\/p>\n<p>During questions to the government in parliament later in the day, Piquemal denounced what he called \u201cfacts of extreme gravity for our country\u2019s sovereignty\u201d and warned such efforts could threaten the integrity of next year\u2019s presidential election in France.<\/p>\n<p>He also asked if the government would summon \u201cthe Israeli ambassador to ask for an explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Her remarks came after reports from Reuters, Haaretz and Lib\u00e9ration that France Unbowed lawmaker Fran\u00e7ois Piquemal, who advanced&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[524,2028,735,10766,375,5,7273,63,12605,343,278,381,987,12606,988,7645,12607,1148,563,804],"class_list":["post-16771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cities","tag-defense","tag-disinformation","tag-elections","tag-france","tag-intelligence","tag-israel","tag-janez-jansa","tag-jean-noel-barrot","tag-law-enforcement","tag-mayors","tag-media","tag-robert-golob","tag-security","tag-services","tag-slovenia","tag-social-media","tag-trade","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}