- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
The Trump administration is considering sanctions against three French magistrates, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel, causing concern within the French judiciary. The judges in question sentenced Marine Le Pen on March 31, 2025, to four years in prison, including two mandatory years, and five years of ineligibility for embezzlement of public funds.
On December 30, 2025, the weekly publication reported on its website anonymous accounts from former US administration officials who said that Washington intends to sanction European magistrates and officials suspected of targeting the far right in France or in Germany. Der Spiegel explicitly cited the case of the three French judges.
“If such claims were proven true or were to materialize,” declared Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, the president of the Paris judicial court, on January 6 during a session welcoming new magistrates, “they would constitute unacceptable and intolerable interference in our country’s internal affairs, which should provoke condemnation from the public authorities.”
Being on the bad side of a convicted conman and a child rapist should be a merit not a concern.
Except these sanctions actually materially affect their lives. Nearly all card transactions are run through American processors (Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, etc.), and just having those avenues blocked from use is crippling. The EU has not yet built up an equivalent infrastructure.
All because these judges in a totally different country did something Trump didn’t like. It’s a badge of honor, sure, but it is not without cost.
France should be covering their assets as a workplace hazard. They’re performing their civic duty, you have to insulate them from international interference.
Sounds like France should ban those payment processors entirely within the country. Swift and brutal retaliation is the only tactic that will curb the Trump-sucking fascists’ fuckery.
Visa should be forced to choose between implementing Trump’s whim and being able to continue to do business at all.
Except every single person would have to then move to cash-only. No more online payments or shopping; it would be like living in the 1980s all of a sudden.
Let’s assume 2/3 of France’s population all have cards and accounts from American processors. That’s about 44mil people. The US alone, on the other hand, has around 229mil (2/3 of current population). Visa would do nothing and just wait it out, because while it would be a blow to lose 44mil customers, they have the US and the rest of the world still using their platform. Meanwhile, the entire country has just imposed “sanctions” upon themselves. Do you think the French government could withstand the growing impatience of their people being forced to use cash for a month? Six months? A year of not being able to pay your bills or shop online?
It would likely take the entire EU banning these processors, and it would take convincing their diverse population that it’s a worthy sacrifice before that. None of that is easy, so I think the easiest path is to heavily fund a speedy buildup of their own processors. Then they can dump Visa and the rest.
In reality, Visa would be forced not to sanction the judges and the US would balk at banning them from the US market. Regardless of how insane and vindictive Trump is, his handlers would force him to back down because punishing a few judges just isn’t worth it.
But France has to play hardball to make that happen.
To be abundantly clear, I’m not arguing that France shouldn’t play hard ball, I’m just pointing out that it’s a complex game of chicken with real consequences just for playing.
I sincerely hope everyone forces Trump to back down whenever the opportunity arises, because every time that happens, he loses credibility as “the strong man” among people who adore him.
SEPA is obviously European and France has its own debit card CB, which is commonly accepted in stores and by atms. So it is a matter of creating a few million CB cards for the French who do not have them.
They will still be able to use their credit/debit cards but not the visa/MasterCard part of it, there is a french parallel system that is used by default if the payment is done by a french bank account to another french bank account. But it does block them off the rest of the EU.
We’re not even talking about building our own alternatives to Visa and MasterCard yet. Everyone keeps talking about Wero which seems more like a replacement for SEPA instant payments.
Wero is a replacement for PayPal. SEPA stands for Single **European **Payment Area.
So even less useful then? Nobody needs PayPal when you have SEPA already. Unless you need to send money to outside of the SEPA coverage area, in which case I don’t think Wero will help much because it has an even smaller coverage area than SEPA.
It’s MasterCard and Visa that need a real replacement. I can’t pay in a shop using the money in my bank account without the US being involved. Only cash allows for that right now.
A lot of countries have local debit cards, which work for local shops and allow you to withdraw money. For France that would be Carte Bancaire (CB) for example. The obvious solution would be to link all of them up. Preferably with a common standard to be issued with new cards. There are co branded ones with Visa and MasterCard, so it should be possible.
Yup. In Poland we have Blik, and can use a code to pay in physical stores and webstores. We can also use it to transfer money directly to a phone number linked to bank account. Only contact less payments use Visa/Mastercard
You’ve already made more progress here than the EU.
My country doesn’t have a local debit card. It doesn’t need one either because the population is a million and change, but an European alternative that could also be used in, at the very least, other European countries, would be awesome. And if common tourist destinations outside of Europe also start accepting this fictional new European payment card network, I think 99% of Europeans would no longer need a Visa or Mastercard.
I’d suggest you spend 5 minutes learning about wero, then.
We also have other payment systems, like the EC cards in Germany.
Laser in Ireland
Okay, so how do I actually use a Wero card in a physical store? And without an American controlled phone OS, since right now all of Wero lives in the banks’ apps and there’s no actual card?
Never heard of it, so it won’t work in my country. Visa and Mastercard only. Those are the only ones that are truly EU-wide.
You can’t, yet. However, the original claim was…
Which is not true. We are talking about it, even working on it. Needs a few years, tho.
Last I heard there’s still no talk of a Wero solution that works without a phone though. No card, only apps and those only run on American-approved phones.
About the “only run on American approved phones”: not really. They work on most phones (and the number of degoogled OS is growing) and banking apps not using NFC often DO work on those phones. You only need to lock the bootloader, not root and use microg. A few companies now sell refurbished (or even new) phones equipped this way so your average non-techie can buy a geopolitically agnostic phone.
Many banking apps require play services too unfortunately. You’d then have to switch banks based on who doesn’t.
Also how do you make NFC payments without NFC? Or more generally, with no NFC and no card, how do you pay IRL?