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French press review 10 December 2016

Is the government's blueprint to tackle high smog levels in France too little too late? And defeat looms for French left in a re-enactment of a Socialists' House of cards. 

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 Air pollution

We begin with the government's controversial plan to tackle unprecedentedly high smog levels in Paris and major cities around the country.

The alert was triggered last week when levels passed PM10 readings of more than 80 micrograms per cubic meters of air particles, with the highest reading, on December 1, at 146.

Le Parisien quotes lung specialists as saying that fine-particle pollution also affects pregnant women, as toxins can pass through the placenta and cause premature births or underweight babies.

As Paris city officials launched a fresh campaign on Thursday to reduce car use in Paris and increase pedestrian and other non-polluting forms of transport, some papers consider the measures enforced during the week as insignificant to deal with the current surge in smog.

More so as motorists in Paris flouted an alternating traffic plan regulating entry into Paris for cars with even and uneven number plates after Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said vehicles accounted for 55 percent of pollution in the capital.

Le Courrier de l'Ouest says the ravages of pollution which are responsible for up to 48,000 deaths a year in France every year, representing about 9 per cent of the country's death, rate are definitely not new to the French authorities.

It lists heavy road traffic, industrial waste pesticides, and firewood as the root causes of the problem costing 100 billion euros a year, according to a 2015 Senat report.

La Montagne holds that the ban on polluting vehicles will not facilitate a reconciliation between blue collar workers and ecology.

In France, it argues, political ecology has actually deepened the rift between the more educated, well off and environmentally-sensitive urban elite and the so-called France of the periphery, the poorer struggling categories of society, to whom ecological issues are relegated to the lower wrung of their concerns, according to the regional newspaper.

Socialist Party Primaries

Libération is watching the power play taking place within the Socialist party and the left ahead of the 2017 Presidential primaries.

It says that the candidates with the best prospects of winning are outside the system such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron, who, according to the newspaper, have disenfranchised themselves from the rules and are playing their cards close their chest.

Despite their contrasting personalities, electoral programs, momentum is on their side, according to the newspaper, as they try to capitalise on the recent political phenomenon -- Brexit and election of Donald Trump.

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