French press review 11 November 2017

Armistice Day reaffirms Franco-German friendship and the duty of Europeans to remember the senseless war.

We begin with comments about President Macron's touch on the 99^th commemoration of Armistice Day.

Le Parisien reports that the high point of the annual event was a meeting between President Macron and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in the Alsace neighbourhood of Compiegne, where they paid homage to thousands of German and French soldiers killed in the south of the Alsace region between 1915 and 1918.

La Presse de la Manche welcomes the inauguration of a first “bi-national historial” on the war at Hartmannswillerkopf which traces a new horizon for peace and friendship in Europe.

The paper argues that European have a duty of remembrance, to respect and to remember at all times that their enlightened forefathers once spent their time killing each other.

Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace says the meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Frank-Walter Steinmeier will not be enough to boost Europe which is suffering from a deficit of ideas.

Saturday’s Le Monde is all about the trove of 13.4 million leaked documents known as the Paradise Papers detailing secretive offshore deals that have sparked a new outcry about tax avoidance by multinationals and the world's super rich.

The publication says sportswear giant Nike used a Dutch loophole in 2014 to reduce its tax on profits to two percent down from the 25 percent average for European companies.

Only the powerful can offer themselves the services of professionals of fiscal optimization, capable of exploiting all the subtleties of legislation, which in reality constitutes a flagrant violation of the law, argues Le Monde.

According to the paper, the attractive fiscal havens offered by some EU nations have slowed down efforts to fight the cancer.

The legitimacy of countries is at stake, says the publication, warning the privileged stockpiling their money in fiscal havens, that history is here to recall that the people will not tolerate the privileges of casts eternally.