The Financial Times with the news from France.

While President Nicolas Sarkozy led his UMP party to victory in the European parliamentary elections in France, it was Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the charismatic Green leader, who really triumphed on Sunday night.
Europe Ecologie, Mr Cohn-Bendit’s party, won 15.7 per cent of the vote, just behind the socialists on 16.8 and way ahead of the centrist Democratic Movement of François Bayrou.
France’s greens and the socialists will now have the same number of seats in the European parliament. In some regions, including Paris and Ile de France, the greens came comfortably ahead of the socialists.
“June 7 will remain the D-Day of political ecology,” said Mr Cohn-Bendit, a German national who acted as student leader in France during the events of May ‘68. The former left-wing activist turner green fought the elections in alliance with José Bové, the environmental campaigner and defender of peasant farming.
Europe Ecologie’s success immediately triggered questions about whether French voters were suddenly becoming more concerned with environmental issues or whether they were simply attracted by an election campaign in which the greens, unlike most of their rivals, concentrated on European issues.
Some of their rivals claimed the greens had been helped by an environmentalist film broadcast on primetime television two days before polling day.
”Home”, a film by activist and photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, was watched by 8m viewers on France 2 on Friday night. Jean-Marie Le Pen, far-right national leader, called the timing “scandalous”.
France 2 pointed out that it was broadcast on the same day in 126 countries on a date decided well before that of the European elections.