French President Emmanuel Macron’s move to dissolve the country’s national assembly and call new elections following the vote for the European parliament was a moment of high political drama. It also illustrated some peculiarities of the French system. In particular, the relationship between the directly elected president and the parliament is now firmly in focus.

What will happen to Macron after this election? Where will power rest? To some extent, we’ll have to wait for answers to those and many other questions thrown up by the move. But providing us with a guiding light to what may follow is Alexandre Frambéry-Iacobone of the Université de Bordeaux. In this superb article commissioned by our Paris bureau, and originally published in French, he considers what is at stake, reminds us of the history of these relationships and concludes that these elections are even more significant than those for the presidency – “France could find itself led by a completely different political dynamic to that of the presidential party.”

Do you subscribe to our weekly podcast? If not check it out here. The latest episode sees presenter Gemma Ware in conversation with Lorena Sánchez, science editor at The Conversation in Spain, as well as academics at the universities of Valencia (Spain) and Groningen (the Netherlands). They’re tackling one of the biggest puzzles in cosmology – why two different methods used to calculate the rate at which the universe is expanding don’t produce the same result.

And in just over a week, the UEFA European Football Championship for men will kick off (I have a particular interest in the opening match). While much of the discussion will be about the merits of star players such as Kylian Mbappé, Jude Bellingham and John McGinn, spare a thought for the referees (no, really). As this investigative long read from academics at Coventry University in the UK shows, football referees at all levels face abuse and even violence, and that is making it harder to find a new generation of refs.