French press review 31 October 2011

The economic crisis hasn't exactly gone away, but it is taking a variety of new shapes on this morning's front pages.

Right-wing Le Figaro reports that a majority of French television viewers were convinced by the performance of President Sarkozy last Thursday evening, as he attempted to explain the latest European plan to save Greece and the Eurozone from total collapse.

12 million people watched the little man, and 55 per cent of them found him more-or-less convincing. As the saying goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time.

Le Monde interviews Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank for the past eight years. He clears his desk today to start a well-earned retirement. Trichet defends the major decisions taken during his time at the helm. He says he understands the anger of ordinary people who see bank executives getting richer while economies collapse.

Trichet also accepts that Europe is eventually going to have to undergo a major institutional shake-up, to create a real overall government. But he doesn't see that as a question for the immediate future.

Business daily Les Echos looks at French government plans to increase Value Added Tax. Apparently, an increase of just 1.5 per cent in the level of VAT on restaurant and hotel bills and house improvements would bring in an extra billion euros. Which is fine, except that the state needs to make up a budget gap of eight billion euros.

This is the day on which French landlords temporarily lose the right to evict tenants, under an institution known as the winter truce. From nine o'clock tonight until 15th March, tenants can not be dislodged.

Libération takes the occasion to look at rental prices in Paris and other large French cities over the past decade. The results are stunning: Paris rents have gone up by 50 per cent in ten years, meaning that young renters and families are effectively excluded from the market. And that means that the social profile of many areas is completely frozen.

Catholic La Croix looks at the dilemma facing Iraq's Christian community, caught between the threat of violence and the desire to contribute to the effort to re-build their country.

And communist L'Humanité looks ahead to this week's G20 summit, saying that the meeting of the heads of the twenty most developed nations is nothing other than a shield to protect the rich. L'Huma says tax havens currently swallow up a minimum of 125 billion euros every year, but that won't be on the G20 agenda, despite the fact that the money would be enough to end world hunger four times over.

On inside pages, Le Monde takes a pessimistic look at the prospects for peace in the Sudanese border regions of Abyei, Southern Kordofan and the Blue Nile.

These are regions which are now officially ruled from Khartoum, despite the fact that they are home to thousands who fought on the side of John Garang and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement during the civil war.

The authorities in Khartoum claim that there are 40,000 armed southern militants active in the north, and the army is determined to drive them out. Le Monde says that the northern military establishment has had trouble digesting the loss of South Sudan in the referendum earlier this year. Re-affirming the territorial integrity of the North has thus taken on a huge significance.

The problem, according to the centrist paper, is one of scale. The three states involved cover an immense area, beyond the capacity of the Sudanese armed forces alone. If they call on local militia, as they did with the Janjawid in Darfour, the consequences could be disastrous.

There are very few foreign aid workers in the area, but all indications point to a potential catastrophe as the regime of Omar al-Bashir attempts to impose itself along the new southern border.

And then there's the vexed question of oil, now exclusively produced in the South, exported exclusively from the northern Port Sudan, the link being assured by a pipeline controlled by the North.

The oil companies are paying their fees directly to the new southern government in Juba, but Khartoum is demanding 20 dollars in fees for every barrel of oil which passes through their pipeline. That's almost two-thirds of the 32-dollar value of each barrel of transported oil. The South is refusing to pay. Thabo Mbeki and Pierre Buyoya are currently heading up an African Union team which is trying to work out a fair oil deal.

That may well turn out to be the easiest part of ensuring peace between North and South Sudan.