Science

The world of French fine dining has become embroiled in yet another ratings row due to the removal of the three-star Michelin ranking from renowned chef Paul Bocuse’s restaurant, almost two years after his death.

The Auberge du Pont de Collonges, situated near the gastronomic capital of Lyon in south-east France, was the oldest three-starred restaurant in the world, having held the ranking without interruption since 1965.

In a rare move, the Michelin boss, Gwendal Poullennec, visited the restaurant on Thursday to deliver the news that the rating had been lowered after 55 years. The decision prompted anger and dismay from Bocuse’s peers.

Poullennec told France Inter radio: “I understand the team’s emotion. It’s a difficult decision but for Michelin, it’s a fair decision.” Changing the ranking to two stars was based on meals eaten there in 2019, according to Poullennec, who said the decision was reached collectively by Michelin inspectors. A restaurant rating always “reflects the current value of a meal. There is no special treatment in a Michelin guide”, he added.

The Bocuse d’Or organisation, which holds the annual international cooking competition Bocuse created, greeted the announcement with sadness and expressed its “unwavering support” for the restaurant.

Bocuse’s family and kitchen team said they were upset by the decision. Celebrity chef Marc Veyrat, who recently sued the Michelin guide over a lost third star, described the move as “pathetic”.

Veyrat said he had lost faith in a new generation of Michelin editors, whom he accused of trying to make a name for themselves by taking down the giants of French cuisine.

“Monsieur Paul”, as Bocuse was known, died in 2018 aged 91, from Parkinson’s disease. Described as the pope of French cuisine, he was one of the country’s most celebrated chefs. He shook up the food industry in the 1970s by creating some of the lighter dishes of the nouvelle cuisine revolution and helping to introduce the notion of a celebrity chef.

Food critic Périco Légasse told BFM television the Michelin guide had committed an irreparable error in a quest for media attention. Meanwhile, three-starred chef Georges Blanc tweeted: “I am sad for the team that took up the torch at Collonges.”

After several weeks of renovations, the restaurant is scheduled to reopen on 24 January, three days before the latest Michelin Guide’s official launch.

According to Michelin, restaurants are selected on four criteria: the quality of the products, expertise of the chef, originality of the dishes and consistency throughout the meal and across seasons.

Critics say, however, the costs of ensuring such standards have made Michelin stars an untenable proposition as more diners baulk at spending excessively on a meal.

In recent years, a handful of French chefs have relinquished their prized three-star status because of the stress of being judged by Michelin inspectors.

For the first time, in 2018, the guide allowed a restaurant to withdraw from its listings after Sébastien Bras, the chef at Le Suquet, said he no longer wished to cook under such pressure. He added that he wanted to be allowed to cook excellent food without suffering anxiety over Michelin’s anonymous judges, who could arrive at his restaurant at any moment.

The US threatened to impose 25% tariffs on cars to push Europeans to initiate proceedings against Iran for violating the nuclear deal, the German defence minister has confirmed.

“This threat exists,” said the German defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, at a press conference in London.

She was asked about an article in the Washington Post that claimed Trump had secretly warned France, Germany and the UK that the US would impose a “25% tariffs on European cars” if they did not activate the mechanism for the settlement of disputes (MRD) of the Iranian international nuclear agreement reached in Vienna in 2015.

Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters on Thursday: “This expression or threat, as you will, does exist.” She is in the UK to meet her counterpart, Ben Wallace, to discuss Anglo-European defence cooperation post-Brexit.

Her remarks came as ministers from the five countries with nationals killed in the Ukrainian plane downed by the Iranian military met in London to coordinate their response to Iran’s handling of the crash inquiry, as well as treatment of victim’s families.

Following the meeting the ministers called for an independent and transparent investigation governed by international civil aviation conventions. With emotions running high over the US assassination of the Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ belated admission of responsibility for downing the jet, Iran is likely to bridle at being told how to carry out its own inquiry.

A Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 plane was shot down outside Tehran killing all 176 crew and passengers. Iran’s handling of the crash led to four days of street protests mainly in Tehran.

Iran initially denied responsibility for the crash, but three days later admitted that it had downed the plane believing it was an incoming US missile. An Iranian national security commission is investigating the episode.

There is concern that some in Iran are refusing to cooperate with the international investigation and refusing to hand over the black box flight recorder. There are claims within the country that the US may have jammed Iranian radar, making it impossible for the anti-aircraft battery operator to have checked the status of the plane.

Trump made his tariffs threat to Europe relatively recently and European diplomats insist they had already made the decision in principle to trigger the dispute mechanism because of previous Iranian steps away from the deal, but had not announced the move in deference to a request from China.

As a result they claim the Trump threat did not push Europe into abandoning its policy of trying to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive.

But the threat is a further insight into Trump’s modus operandi with Europe – in effect using threats of economic sanctions and the power of the dollar to try to force Europe to follow US foreign policy.

The news will only confirm the view of the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, that Europe is failing to stand up to a high school bully. Zarif met the EU external affairs chief, Josep Borrell, to discuss the European decision to trigger the dispute mechanism, describing it as “a strategic mistake”.

Meanwhile, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, revealed that Iran is now enriching more uranium than it did before it agreed to a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.

Speaking on live TV on Thursday, Rouhani said: “We are enriching more uranium than before the deal was reached … Pressure has increased on Iran but we continue to progress.”

Iran has gradually scaled back its commitments under the nuclear deal in retaliation to Washington’s withdrawal from the pact in 2018 and its reimposition of sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.

Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement in part because it did not address Iran’s support for armed groups across the region and its ballistic missile programme.

Iran continued to abide by the agreement until last summer, when it began openly breaching some of its limits, saying it would not be bound by the deal if it saw none of its promised economic benefits.

After the airstrike on 3 January that killed Gen Qassem Suleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional military operations, Iran said it would abandon all restrictions in the nuclear deal.

Previously it has appeared that Iran has only modestly increased its nuclear activity. In recent months it has boosted its level of enrichment of uranium to 4.5% – higher than the 3.67% limit set by the agreement but far from the 20% enrichment it was engaged in before the deal. Uranium must be enriched to 90% to be used in a nuclear weapon.

In his speech, Rouhani acknowledged the sanctions had caused economic pain but said such considerations could not be separated from foreign policy and national security.

He also acknowledged the rising tensions with the US. “A single bullet can cause a war, and not shooting a single bullet can lead to peace,” he said, adding that his administration was seeking greater security.

A former German diplomat who worked in the EU’s institutions is under investigation along with two lobbyists on suspicion of spying for the Chinese government.

Nine homes and offices in Brussels, Berlin, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria have reportedly been raided by police on behalf of the German federal prosecutor’s office.

The investigation, led by Germany’s attorney general, Peter Frank, is examining the activities of the diplomat since he moved into lobbying two years ago, along with two employees of a second such firm, Der Spiegel reports.

A spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office confirmed the investigation into suspected espionage but declined to offer any details beyond stating that there had not been any arrests.

It is claimed that two of the individuals shared confidential commercial information with the Chinese ministry for state security. The third indicated a willingness to do so, according to Der Spiegel.

The diplomat at the centre of the investigation is reported to have formerly worked in both the EU commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS), the bloc’s foreign affairs wing.

The German magazine reported that he had subsequently been an EU ambassador in “several countries” before ending his EU career in 2017 to join a lobbying company.

The investigation is notable for it being comparatively rare. Last year the EEAS alerted member states to the presence of about 250 Chinese and 200 Russian spies said to be roaming the embassy-lined streets of Brussels. But there are few cases of spies for Beijing being uncovered.

The suspect is said to have started to leak information to his Chinese senior officer in the same year of his move and to have recruited the two other suspects.

One of the two is said to have travelled to China for a meeting with his alleged handler. In a statement, the unnamed lobbyist company said that its employee vehemently denied the allegations made against him.

Last autumn, the US government’s expulsion of two Chinese spies who had driven into a sensitive military base in Norfolk, Virginia was the first such action in 30 years.

In Belgium, in the same year, the head of a Chinese language and cultural institute at VUB (Free University Brussels) was barred from returning following a trip to his home country. The decision to impose a ban was based on concerns that he was considered an espionage threat by the security services.

Nigel Farage “will not take a penny” of the £153,000 windfall he could claim for his 20-year stint as a member of the European parliament, his spokesman has said, as the UK’s 73 MEPs are set to be told on Monday night about any cash payouts they are due.

Farage could leave the EU on 31 January with a pre-tax golden goodbye worth €178,657 (£152,992) under a European parliament “transition allowance” for ex-MEPs, a calculation based on his 20 complete years since 1999.

Asked about the transition allowance, a spokesman for Farage said: “He won’t take a penny.”

In 2017, Farage told Sky News he would “probably” take the money, but did not expect the parliament to give it to him.

The UK’s 73 MEPs were due to be informed about their exit arrangements at a special meeting at the European parliament in Strasbourg on Monday night. It is the third such briefing, reflecting the shifting Brexit date, from 29 March 2019, to 31 October and now 31 January 2020.

Most elected under Farage’s Brexit party banner, such as Richard Tice, and Annuziata Rees-Mogg, who later defected to the Conservatives, will quit the EU stage without any prospect of an EU golden goodbye, as they have been MEPs for less than a year and so are not entitled to the allowance.

Former MEPs are entitled to one month of salary, for every year they have been an MEP, for a maximum of 20 months. But as many British MEPs were newly elected in May 2019, they have not served long enough.

MEPs are not entitled to the funds if they are elected to another parliament or take public sector work. Parliament sources said there was nothing to stop MEPs from claiming the transition allowance while taking a job with the private or charity sector.

Farage, a former City of London metals trader, joined the European parliament in 1999, when leaving the EU was an eccentric project for the little-known Ukip. In one of his first speeches, attacking the EU for its ban on British beef, Farage urged the UK government to “leave this club and get into the real trading world”. After two decades as an MEP, his rhetoric has become Conservative party orthodoxy.

Farage became one of the European parliament’s highest earning MEPs for second jobs, although he has been overtaken by new Brexit party MEPs such as property fund manager Ben Habib and former Tory minister turned reality TV star Ann Widdecombe. In 2019 Farage earned €360,000 (£319,000) a year from his Thorn in the Side media company, making him the seventh best paid out of 227 MEPs with second jobs.

At the meeting scheduled for Monday night, MEPs were to be told that they have to clear out of their Brussels office by 7 February, although they have to vacate their Strasbourg bureau by Thursday, the last day of their final meeting in the French city.

The departing British MEPs will have to return access passes, special EU “laissez-passer” cards, voting cards, office keys, iPads and laptops, as well as passes allowing free travel on the Belgian railway network SNCB.

Many British MEPs may feel they don’t need to attend the briefing, as similar gatherings were arranged before earlier Brexit days of 31 October and 29 March. But the Liberal Democrats and Brexit party succeeded in getting large numbers of first-time MEPs elected.

On leaving the parliament, MEPs can apply to join the Former Members Association, which has the aim of “harness[ing] the experience of former members with a view to strengthening parliamentary democracy”, according to an internal document. The MEPs are also to be informed about arrangements for their staff: Brussels-based staff are to quit by 31 January, while staff based in the UK could stay on longer.

Parliament officials confirmed on Wednesday that MEPs would vote on the Brexit withdrawal agreement on Wednesday 29 January. The result was seen as a foregone conclusion paving the way for Britain’s exit on 31 January.

Officials are still weighing how to mark Brexit day, but nothing has been fixed. “It’s nothing to celebrate,” said one EU source.

A former soldier has admitted killing a Slovak journalist and his fiancee, a crime that sparked mass protests leading to the resignation of the prime minister Robert Fico.

Miroslav Marček told the special criminal court in Pezinok that he accepted guilt, an admission that could reduce his sentence from potential life imprisonment.

Marček was charged with shooting Ján Kuciak, 27, an investigative reporter, and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, in their house near Bratislava in February 2018.

Two other defendants including Marian Kocner, a businessman who had been a subject of Kuciak’s reporting, said they were innocent of charges of ordering the killing. One defendant who police say helped Marček to carry out the killing did not make a statement at the hearing.

The killing led to large demonstrations against corruption that forced Fico and the country’s chief of police to step down. Several senior justice officials later quit after investigations revealed they had been in contact with Kocner.

Last year Slovak public television reported police sources as saying Marček had admitted his guilt during questioning. A fifth suspect, Zoltan Andrusko, confessed in December to facilitating the murder and was given a 15-year prison sentence.

France will go ahead with its controversial new tax on the profits of large technology firms such as Google and Facebook despite US threats to retaliate, as the government vows that it is just the start of a crucial rethink of the regulation of tech monopolies.

Cédric O, the French junior minister for digital affairs, told the Guardian that Emmanuel Macron’s drive to make companies including Amazon and Apple pay more and fairer tax would go ahead, despite US warnings that it could open up a new front in the international trade war.

Washington has threatened to retaliate with tariffs of up to 100% on imports of French products such as champagne, cheese, handbags, lipstick and cookware worth $2.4bn (£1.8bn) after a US government investigation found that France’s new digital services tax would harm US technology companies.

A decision on tariffs is expected in the coming weeks, but O said: “We will not withdraw the tax, that is certain. We think retaliation measures are not good for either the US, France or businesses concerned and they could lead to a reaction from the European Union.”

France is to become the first major economy to impose a tax on internet heavyweights. Dubbed the Gafa tax – an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – the legislation will impose a 3% levy on the total annual revenues of the largest technology firms providing services to French consumers. President Macron has called it a “fairer” response to internet giants who are are currently able to book profits in low-tax countries like Ireland and Luxembourg, no matter where the revenue originates. Donald Trump has called it “foolish” and threatened revenge. France has argued that the tax is aimed at all tech firms and not just American ones.

But O said the tax, although “politically symbolic and democratically important”, was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of new regulations that must be introduced internationally to deal with the powerful tech giants, which he warned had gained a vast footprint on global economies, threatening democracy and risking a public health crisis over hate speech.

O said internet and technology regulation was now a major part of French soft power on the international diplomatic stage. He said the domination of a tiny number of tech giants on the way people search for information, communicate and interact was now challenging public power and nation states. France is not the only country that has devised a tax on tech firms – the UK is considering its own measures. But France, which wants the OECD club of rich countries to lead on tech tax issues, is now urging the EU and countries further afield to look closer at regulation.

O said tech giants, as monopolies, now presented a democratic challenge to governments. “Certain tech platforms have become the building blocks of our economy and democracy,” he said. “They have acquired a monopoly position today which gives them a footprint no other company has on the economy, so they need to see specific regulations applied … A company which has 1.4 billion citizens on its social networks can’t be treated like just any other company, with the same rules. A company that is the only search engine or messaging platform can’t have just the same rules as any other private company.”

He said ideas being discussed internationally could include special regulations for tech giants, making large tech companies share their data or services, or limiting acquisitions.

Current rules were inadequate and had to be updated, he said. “Right now, we have a body of regulations that were thought up in the industrial age and struggle to adapt to the data economy.”

O said addressing online hate speech was also key. “Hate speech is a global public health problem,” he warned. “The rise in online hate speech creates a major difficulty for public powers: we don’t know how to protect our citizens online in the same way we protect them in real life. If I threatened to kill you or your children in the street, I’d face police. But that doesn’t exist online. It’s both a public health issue and a problem for democracy, because if people think we can’t protect them, they will vote for others who they think – rightly or wrongly – can protect them.”

He added: “If the only countries that know how to successfully regulate hate online are authoritarian, non-democratic countries, that is a problem for democracies and progressive governments.”

France is currently debating a tough new law against online hatred aimed at wiping out racist and homophobic trolling, but there have been rows in the French senate over whether hateful content should be taken down from a social network site within 24 hours.

O said he felt people’s concerns over the impact of big tech giants in daily life had played a role in citizens’ protest movements recently. He said the town-hall debates held in France after the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) anti-government protests had shown there was concern over not just tech giants paying enough tax, but the new online economy and its impact.

“Some think the world is developing fast and abandoning them, and tech can be part of that fear – whether it’s online commerce, with small businesses closing, the Uber-isation of working patterns, or people questioning how a growing number of decisions are taken by algorithms that no one understands.”

He said: “There are views that technology has gone from a utopia, where the internet was presented as solving all our problems, to a type of dystopia, which is just as irrational. This is particularly present in France, which has had a complex relationship with technology for the past decades. But it’s everywhere and we must address it.”

Iran’s admission that it accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane has been met with international demands for a full investigation into the disaster, in which 176 people died during a period of soaring tensions between Tehran and Washington.

A statement on Iran’s official IRNA news agency on Saturday morning said the military had made an “unforgivable mistake” in targeting Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 shortly after it took off from Tehran’s international airport on Wednesday. It was followed by condolences from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and an apology from the country’s president, Hassan Rouhani.

The Boeing 737 was hit by two surface-to-air missiles in the hours after Tehran launched ballistic missile strikes on US military bases in Iraq. The airliner was downed as a result of human error at a time when miltary forces were on high alert, the statement said.

Iranian officials had previously denied a missile strike was to blame, dismissing the allegations as western propaganda and blaming mechanical malfunction.

Saturday’s statement was greeted with some relief that the immediate cause of the disaster had been made clear, but Ukraine, Canada and other countries with citizens among the victims have since made fresh calls for further measures from Tehran.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymy Zelenskiy, said: “Even before the termination of the international commission, Iran has pleaded guilty to crashing the Ukrainian plane. But we insist on full admission of guilt. We expect from Iran assurances of readiness for full and open investigation, bringing those responsible to justice, returning the bodies of the dead, payment of compensation, official apologies through diplomatic channels.”

He later wrote on Facebook: “We expect Iran … to bring the guilty to the courts,” , adding that he was scheduled to speak to Rouhani on Saturday afternoon.

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said his country’s focus was on “closure, accountability, transparency and justice” for the families of the 57 Canadian victims.

Iran has invited investigators from Canada, Ukraine and Boeing to visit the accident site on the outskirts of Tehran and said it would welcome representatives of other countries whose citizens had died.

Responsible parties would be held accountable, Iran’s military said, and its systems would be upgraded to prevent such mistakes in future.

Khamenei said he sent deep sympathy to the families of the victims and expressed a desire for a comprehensive investigation. He called on the armed forces to “pursue probable shortcomings and guilt in the painful incident”.

The acknowledgement of responsibility has renewed questions about why authorities did not shut down the country’s main international airport and its airspace after launching the missile attacks on Iraq when they feared US reprisals were possible.

The strikes on the two US bases on Iraqi soil were retaliation for the US drone strike that killed the powerful Quds force leader Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad on 3 January, the culmination of months of tit-for-tat attacks that recently threatened to push Washington and Tehran into war.

It also undermines the credibility of information provided by senior Iranian officials so far. As recently as Friday, Ali Abedzadeh, the head of the national aviation department, told reporters with certainty that a missile had not caused the crash. The cabinet spokesman, Ali Rabiei, dismissed reports of a missile on Thursday, saying they rubbed salt on a painful wound for families of the victims.

Air crash experts have raised serious concerns since the accident over the handling of the crash site, including the removal of debris, sparking fears that Tehran has sought to eliminate evidence from the area.

The passenger plane was mistaken for a hostile target after it turned toward a sensitive military centre, said General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace division. His unit accepted full responsibility for downing the plane, he said. In an address broadcast by state TV, he said he wished he was dead when he learned about the accident.

He said the Revolutionary Guards had strengthened their air defences and were at the “highest level of readiness” for fear the US would retaliate. He said an officer made the “bad decision” to open fire on the plane after mistaking it for a cruise missile.

The public acknowledgement is likely to inflame public sentiment inside Iran against the authorities after citizens rallied around their leaders in the wake of Suleimani’s killing.

The vast majority of the passengers on the plane were Iranians or Iranian-Canadians, and the crash came a few weeks after a widespread crackdown on protests triggered by a rise in fuel prices.

The flight, which was bound for Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, was carrying 167 passengers and nine crew from several countries, including 82 Iranians, at least 57 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians and three Britons.

The semi-official Fars news agency reported that Khamenei had ordered top security officials to review the crash on Friday morning and announce the results.

“If some individuals, in any position, were aware of the issue but made statements contradicting the reality or hid the truth for any reason, they should be named and tried,” said Fars, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards.

Others speculated that the security forces may have concealed information from civilian authorities. “Concealing the truth from the administration is dreadful,” Mohammad Fazeli, a sociology professor in Tehran, wrote on social media.

“If it had not been concealed, the head of civil aviation and the government spokesmen would not have persistently denied it. Concealing the truth for three days is dangerous.”

Greta Thunberg and fellow youth climate campaigners are demanding that global leaders immediately end the “madness” of huge ongoing investments in fossil fuel exploration and enormous subsidies for coal, oil and gas use.

The 21 young activists are also calling on the political and business leaders who will be attending the World Economic Forum in Davos to ensure investment funds dump their holdings in fossil fuel companies.

“Anything less would be a betrayal against life itself,” said Thunberg and colleagues in an article in the Guardian. “Today’s business as usual is turning into a crime against humanity. We demand that you play your part in putting an end to this madness.”

The burning of fossil fuels is the biggest driver of the climate emergency. Scientists predict catastrophic impacts unless deep cuts in emissions are made rapidly, but global emissions are still rising.

“Young people are being let down by older generations and those in power,” the climate strikers said. “To some it may seem like we are asking for a lot. But this is just the very minimum effort needed to start the rapid sustainable transition.”

Much of the world’s existing coal, oil and gas reserves must be kept in the ground to avoid the worst impacts of global heating. But investment in fossil fuel exploration and extraction remains high.

Since the Paris climate agreement in 2015, the world’s largest investment banks have provided more than $700bn (£535bn) to fossil fuel companies to develop new projects, with the total investment estimated to be trillions of dollars. Fossil fuel companies argue that their products will be used for many years to come and that they have a pivotal role in shifting the energy system to zero emissions. But their investments in green energy are tiny compared with those in fossil fuels.

Subsidies for fossil fuels also remain high despite a G20 pledge in 2009 to eliminate them. The IMF estimates such subsidies run at $10m a minute, or $5.2tn a year. “The fact that [ending investment and subsidies] hasn’t been done already is, quite frankly, a disgrace,” said Thunberg and colleagues.

Investors managing funds totalling $12tn have already divested from coal, oil and gas, but the climate activists demand that “all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels”.

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, said in December that the financial sector was not cutting investments in oil and gas companies rapidly enough and warned that assets in the sector could end up “worthless”. He said in October that companies and industries not moving towards zero-carbon emissions would be punished by investors and go bankrupt.

“It ought to be in every company and stakeholder’s interest to make sure that the planet they live on will thrive,” said the climate strikers, who come from nations across the world, including the US, Australia, Brazil, Russia, India and Nigeria. “But history has not shown the corporate world’s willingness to hold themselves accountable. So it falls on us, the children, to do that.”

The agenda for the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which begins on 20 January in Switzerland, lists four “urgent and important” global issues. The first is “how to address the urgent climate and environmental challenges that are harming our ecology and economy”.

The climate strikers said: “The world’s leaders should invest their money in existing sustainable technologies, research and in restoring nature. Short-term profit should not trump long-term stability of life.”

Irregular migration into the European Union has fallen to its lowest annual level since 2013, the European border and coast guard agency has said, despite a significant increase in the number of arrivals to Greece.

Frontex said that according to preliminary figures for 2019, irregular crossings detected on the bloc’s external borders fell by 6% to just over 139,000 – about 92% down on the record number set during the 2015 European migration crisis.

The decline was primarily due to significant falls in the numbers of people reaching European shores via the central and western Mediterranean routes, the agency said, while the eastern Mediterranean route saw a corresponding increase.

About 14,000 people, mostly from Tunisia and Sudan, used the central Mediterranean route from north Africa – mainly Libya – to Italy and Malta, a 41% decline. Those taking the western Mediterranean route, mostly Moroccans and Algerians crossing into Spain, dropped by 58% to 24,000.

But the eastern Mediterranean route into Greece saw “growing migratory pressure” from spring until September, Frontex said, with more than 82,000 irregular migrants detected on the route in 2019 – a 46% increase on the previous year.

The agency said arrivals via this route during the second half of last year were at their highest level since the EU signed its 2016 agreement with Ankara aimed at limiting the influx of irregular migrants entering the EU through Turkey.

There was also evidence that some people who had been transferred to the mainland from the Greek islands, where conditions in overcrowded camps are appalling, later moved on to the western Balkans. The number of irregular migrants detected on the EU’s Albanian and Serbian borders was more than double last year’s total.

Overall, Afghan nationals accounted for almost a quarter of all irregular arrivals in 2019, Frontex said, almost three times as many as in the previous year. There were also more women and children than in recent years.

One of France’s most celebrated and august art institutions has taken a novel approach to embracing technology while breathing new life into its collection – by installing an Instagram artist-in-residence who imagines the social media accounts of famous artists from history.

The Paris museum Musée d’Orsay has invited the illustrator Jean-Philippe Delhomme to take over its Instagram account every Monday during 2020. On the account he will post a different drawing each week, depicting an artist as a contemporary social media user.

Delhomme, whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, began with the French art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans, who is the subject of a current exhibition at the museum. In the Instagram post, Huysmans has posted a portrait of himself said to have been painted by the artist Jean-Louis Forain in 1878 with the caption “Thank you @JL.Forain for my portrait.” Underneath, a user called gervex – presumably the artist Henri Gervex, who was the subject of an essay by Huysmans – writes: “No mean criticism this time?”

The Orsay president, Laurence des Cars, told Le Figaro that the purpose of the project was to bring more visibility to its artists from centuries ago. “The aim [of the residency] is to bring these artists of the second half of the 19th century closer by enrolling them in today’s interactions,” Des Cars said.

She added that the idea was not to “desecrate works” but to draw attention to a particular moment in an artist’s biography, and through “contemporary commentaries, fictitious or not, to evoke the adhesions or antagonisms aroused”.

Delhomme released a book last year called Artists’ Instagrams: The Never Seen Instagrams of the Greatest Artists, in which he depicted the social media accounts of Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo and Paul Gauguin. “If Instagram had existed a century ago, there would be no art criticism today,” he told the Guardian at the time. “Only thumbs-ups and emojis.”

Delhomme, who works in Paris’s Montparnasse district, which was famous as a hub of intellectuals and creatives, said he wanted to focus on artists who were famous to the “point of creating mythologies around themselves”.

He said: “That’s what was fun about it. They’re the gods of art. It’s like doing the Instagram of Mount Olympus. Artists want to be seen – even the most serious ones. Why wouldn’t they show off like everyone else? That element was always there, but with these social platforms it’s just irresistible.”

Orsay was widely praised last year for its ground-breaking exhibition Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse, which displayed French masterpieces but renamed them in honour of the black subjects in the pictures but absent from the narratives.