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France

French press review 28 June 2013

There is an overkill of the Tour de France French cycling Grand prix in todays' papers, but before that a string of stories found their way on the front pages this morning.

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The powerful state accounts chides the government for its continuing thrifty policies. Les Echos says current spending will have to be slashed by 28 billion euros in order for France to meet the three per cent EU “golden rule” by 2014.

Le Figaro notes that Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has admitted that the budget is skidding in 2013 and that the audits court was right to point this out. The right-wing newspaper says that the economic crisis and the absence of long overdue structural reforms make the government’s big spending programme untenable, pointing to the obligation it has to abandon a long-term massive splash out for the development of France’s much touted fast train network.

The government's announcement on Thursday to rehabilitate locally-operated networks neglected for years is the lead story in today’s Libération. The paper says the move contradicts the “take time and travel quickly” slogan which the national carrier the SNCF adopted when it laid out its plans to build the flagship fast train the TGV 30 years ago. The problem now according to Libération is to see how users are going to get used to the new slow travel conditions.

L’Humanité jumps on the opportunity to denounce what it terms the policies of the so-called “duettists of austerity”, meaning EU President Jose Manuel Borroso and French President Francois Hollande. The Communist party daily takes offence in the fact that EU leaders meeting in Brussels today have to approve new economic recommendations and a new horse medicine imposed on Eurozone countries.

It will be a summit of hypocrisy writes the Communist party daily and it warns that 85 organizations affiliated to the European Trade Union Confederation are calling for a change of economic direction marked by new measures to tackle the crisis-hit continent's soaring jobs crisis.

Aujourd’hui en France expresses shock at the reopening of one of France’s judicial fiascos: the Outreau child abuse scandal, eight years after most of the prime suspects were acquitted. According to the paper, this will be the third time that a criminal court will be looking into what now looks as a “cursed dossier”.

Aujourd’hui en France reports that the new trial will focus on Daniel Legrand, who was 19 years old when he was detained in 2001 for the suspected rape of four children but never tried. Legrand is the son of one of the key Outreau suspects. The case would have been proscribed by October this year but a child protection organization known as “Innocence in Danger” learnt about Daniel Legrand’s judicial status while researching the shooting of a picture on the Outreau judicial scandal.

Talking about scandals, the ex-Interior Minister and former Elysée Secretary General Claude Guéant is emerging from the pack as the point man in the Bernard Tapie affair – the controversial multi-million euros reparations deal which the businessman made with the French government after selling the Adidas sports firm.

Aujourd’hui en France quotes several sources saying that Monsieur Guéant started heckling officials in the Ministry of Finance about Tapie’s case as early as 2006, when he served as cabinet Director to then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

Libération says Claude Guéant is unruffled by being at the heart of several scandals on occult allowances he earned while working in the Interior Ministry, the doubtful sale of paintings and that he's actually pursuing small businesses around Africa.

The paper reports that after his shady dealings in Equatorial Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire the henchman on Wednesday shuttled to the drifting Central African Republic, a priced destination for veterans of the Françafrique dispensation.

Libération quotes reliable sources saying that he flew to Bangui on a private jet to meet the country’s strongman Michel Djotodia who took over the country in March. La Lettre du Continent says the ex-Interior minister, who is now a business lawyer, allegedly offered to serve as a middleman to help Djotodia acquire security and intelligence surveillance equipment.

And the sports daily L’Equipe relishes about a fantastic summer on the road of the Tour de France as the 100th edition of the Cycling Grand Prix rolls off from Porto-Vecchio in the Island of Corsica.

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