French press review 22 May 2013

The threat of English continues to terrify certain French editors this morning. And a report says that billions are salted away in overseas tax-dodging accounts.

The main headline in tabloid Aujourd'hui en France can be roughly translated as "We can no longer get along without English."

The paper explains that, even setting aside the question of teaching certain university courses in the language of Shakespeare, French people who do not speak English correctly are at a disadvantage professionally and socially.

Le Monde's front page editorial looks, more or less, at the same question but points out that the debate about English is clouding the wider question of university reform.

Foreign languages are just one tiny and relatively unimportant part of a major package, says Le Monde.

Half of French first-years drop out of the system, so something is clearly wrong. French research continues to trail American and now Asian universities. Despite a huge boost in spending over the past six years, the French university sector is still ridiculously short of funds.

The proposed law, which will be debated at the National Assembly later today, is an attempt to capitalise on real gains made over the past two decades, says Le Monde. But it will mean nothing unless a way can be found to finance a sector that notoriously pays only long-term returns.

The day's other big story concerns the fact that an estimated 1,000 billion euros is salted away in offshore accounts and is therefore outside the tax reach of cash strapped European governments.

Said governments are going to have a summit meeting in Brussels this very day, with a view to making life harder for tax cheats. The participating ministers will be motivated by a laudable desire to ensure that the law is respected and also by the fact that the 27 struggling governments could do with the increased tax take in these days of crisis.

What can they do?

The accountants who set up these schemes are very clever and well paid for their cleverness. They don't make it simple for the tax people, that's the whole point.

So can 27 well-meaning, hard-up finance ministers turn the tide?

Don't hold your breath. Especially since many of the classic tax avoidance schemes are not even strictly illegal.

Take the system known as the "Double Irish", put in place by Google to keep its global tax obligations down to somewhere between 2.5 and five per cent. The profits are made by the parent company, based in Ireland, and are then transferred to Holland before being returned to Ireland, en route for a bank account in Bermuda.

The second largest investor in the Chinese economy, after Hong Kong, is the tiny Virgin Islands, way ahead of the United States.

Given that the 27 minister yesterday failed to agree on new tax rules for savings accounts and that Luxembourg and Austria insist on protecting the secrecry of bank transactions, the owners of the disputed gazillions can probably rest easy for another few years.