French press review 23 May 2017

Last night's Manchester attack in which at least 22 people lost their lives dominates this morning's newspaper websites. With very little information available, the general tone is of shock and resignation.

French daily Le Monde looks at the front pages across the Channel this morning.

"Terror at the Arena" is the main headline in local paper the Manchester Evening News, a reference to the venue at the centre of the attack where a concert by teen idol Ariana Grande had just ended.

"Murder in Manchester" says the Guardian.

"Carnage at Pop Concert" says the Scottish Daily Mail.

Macron starts the task of selling his labour reforms to the trade unions

On other pages, Le Monde looks at the challenge facing new French President Emmanuel Macron as he embarks on an effort to convince the employers and the trade unions that his reform of labour law is the only way forward.

François Hollande took two years to get the "social partners" to the negotiating table to talk about how French businesses could best be helped out of the current crisis.

Macron has made it clear that, since any economic decisions will take time to bear fruit, he cannot afford to hang around.

It's a complicated subject. Macron has promised to completely restructure the way unemployment benefit is financed, to give public and private employees the same pensions under the same conditions and to cut the taxes and charges that many French bosses say make life difficult or impossible.

Crucially, the president says he wants to see a reversal of the way workplace negotiations are handled. Instead of the current centralised bargaining leading to one deal for all, Macron wants to see agreements being struck at the level of individual businesses, always guaranteeing that no such deal can be less generous than the wider agreement covering the entire sector. The bosses are delighted; the trade unions remain unconvinced.

But the unions are ready for a fight, saying they are happy to talk but remain unconvinced the proposed measures will help in the effort against unemployment.

And then there's the still-to-be-resolved question of whether Macron will have a parliamentary majority after the general election in June. If he does not, he'll be forced to negotiate with other political groups in order to see the law through.

Because, even though Macron has promised to speed up the process by passing laws "under ordonnance," thus bypassing the usual to-and-fro debate between the National Assembly and the Senate, even that has to be authorised by a parliamentary majority.

Global financial wizards put on trial in London

Le Monde has an article on its economics pages about a trial which opened before the High Court in London yesterday.

It has taken nine years to bring this case to court. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and four of its top executives are accused by several thousand former shareholders of having lied about the bank's financial health in 2008, just before Lehman Brothers went down with all hands and the global financial crisis began.

Overnight the Royal Bank of Scotland went from being the biggest bank in the world to a total disaster. In the closing months of 2008 alone, RBS lost 28 billion euros, a tragic record for a British business. Accumulated debts since are reckoned to exceed 70 billion euros. The shares which were once worth two pounds each plunged to less than a penny.

Shareholders were wiped out.

Some of those who lost their savings have been bought off by the bank, some have been discouraged by the tons of documentation produced by the RBS legal team, some have simply died. But, of an original 27,000 complainants, 9,000 are still in the fight to find out how and why their money was lost by the bank once described as being "too big to fail".

The trial is expected to last at least three months.