French press review 16 September 2016

The French press is enjoying the ping-pong between President Francois Hollande and arch-rival Nicolas Sarkozy as the  primaries' race tightens.   

The papers report that Sarkozy and Juppé would score  37 percent during the first round of the primaries, but the poll shows that the former premier would beat Sarkozy by 52% to 48% in the second round ballot, according to the interactive survey by the Harris Institute for France Télévisions.

Sarkozy vs Hollande?

Le Parisien draws the conclusions. What that means it says, is that the prospects of Hollande facing Sarkozy in the 2017 presidential elections are very slim. In an online poll carried out by the paper after Monsieur Sarkozy's television interview Thursday night, more than 65 percent of Le Parisien's readers said they weren't convinced by his agenda for a second term, and attempts to distance himself from the Bygmalion affair, scandal, during which fake invoices were issued to cover up campaign bills that exceeded spending limits by millions of euros.

L'Opinion

The conservative newspaper, says that while Monsieur Hollande struggles desperately to find arguments to justify his plan to seek re-election, the single thing that is worth noting about him is that 9 out of 10 French citizens have already wiped his current term of office off the board.

La Montagne/Centre France

For the regional publication, Hollande's "disciples" are nursing no doubts that their "champion" will reach the reach the second round of the 2007 presidential elections, even if that means squeezing through a mouse hole. According to the paper, Nicolas Sarkozy, the opponent Hollande dreams the most about facing in the election, is unlikely to make that miracle come true as he battles against a string of investigations facing him, starting from last week's recommendation by prosecutors that he face trial in the Bygmalion affair, .

Libération

With Republican Party candidates squaring off over what to do about France's budget deficit and spiraling unemployment, left-leaning Libé urges the front runners Nicolas Sarkozy, Alain Juppé and Francois Fillon to look at Denmark for inspiration.

Denmark tops world debt rankings with households owing their creditors 321 percent of disposable incomes, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. With Denmark sitting in sixth position on the chart of the world's top 10 richest countries, Libération holds that "big public spending and the over-taxing of Danes have neither ruined the economy nor hurt the fight against unemployment which stood at 6.3 percent in April 2015.

Alstom

Le Figaro

The conservative publication comes back on the government's battle with train-building giant Alstom over the future of the historic locomotive plant in the eastern city of Belfort.

Le Figaro points to a telling coincidence which claims distinguishes the good industrial policy of one company from another: the inauguration by Prime Minister Manuel Valls of car tires manufacturer Michelin's brand new center for technological research while hundreds of demonstrators marched through Belfort to protest plans to close down the 1880 factory which produces the fast speed TGV train locomotive.

Le Figaro, contrasts what it calls, the clever use of tax credits to promote innovation and skilled jobs on one hand and obtuse interventionism by the government which it says prevents Alstom from reorganizing and reinventing itself on the other.

L'Humanité

Even as President Francois Hollande pledged that his government would do "all it can to ensure that the Belfort site can keep going... for many years," the Communist daily says it won't trust the president's "circumstantial" promises.

It's worth recalling that the loss of up to 400 jobs and thousands more dependent on the Belfort factory are deeply embarrassing for the Socialist government, eight months ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections, in which high unemployment is expected to be a key issue.

Britain clears Hinkley Point Nuclear Project

La Croix

The Catholic reacts to the controversy surrounding the 21 billion euro Hinkley Point nuclear power station after Britain finally gave the go ahead after concerns over China's one-third stake in the flagship project of Europe's nuclear sector.

Beijing's state-run China General Nuclear Corporation (CGN) is set to finance 7 billion of the cost of plant, with EDF providing the remaining 14 billion euros. Despite concern about how EDF will fund the two nuclear reactors, La Croix says that project being the very first EDF contract in Britain in more than 20 years opens bright prospects for the electricity giant and its strategic decision to develop the advanced technology industry.

Regime change in Libya: erroneous assumptions?

Le Monde

The paper reacts on the damning report issued by the British Parliament on Wednesday on Britain's decision-making in the run up to its intervention alongside France in 2011, that led to the overthrow and killing of Libyan leader Muamer Gadhafi.

The Crispin Blunt report named after the chair of the Common's Foreign Affairs Committee criticizes the operation for focusing exclusively on regime change through military means, and failed to identify the militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion against Gadhafi in Benghazi.

According to Le Monde, while Gadhafi’s Libya was not the paragon of internal and regional political stability painted in the report, the British lawmakers did confirm that the Western allies should have called off the bombing campaign in Benghazi and enforced the ceasefire and no-fly zone against Gadhafi’s forces authorized in the Arab-backed UN Security Council resolution.

The allies should have gone back to the UN and undertaken a frantic analysis on the country's situation, which "unfortunately they failed to do", the newspaper writes.