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French press review 28 February 2018

More analysis and reaction to the latest government reform plan targeting workers in the rail sector. A look at what Italy's parliamentay elections might mean for both Italy and the rest of Europe. And the strange and worrying warming of the North Pole.

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"Macron gets tough with the unions" would be one way of translating the main headline in this morning's right-wing daily, Le Figaro.

Having pushed through a controversial reform of labour law last autumn, the French president has since embarked on campaigns to reform the rail sector, the civil service, unemployment benefit, the status of apprentices and professional training.

"We're doing what we said we would do, neither more nor less, and we're doing it on the basis of discussions which give all involved the chance to be heard. Even if, at the end of the day, it's the government which decides," chortles an unidentified member of the president's team.

A bit like the murder suspect in the American Wild West, assured by his judge that he'd be hanged but that he's be given a fair trial first.

As Laurent Berger, boss of one of France's largest trade union organisations put it yesterday, "The Macron method is, you discuss, I decide."

And the president can always fall back on his huge election victory, based on a programme which he is now scrupulously working through.

Le Figaro quotes another anonymous government advisor to the effect that the general public support the president because they've seen these difficult reforms diluted or abandonned so many times in the past and are now convinced that the status quo can no longer be maintained.

Le Monde looks at the efforts by the rail unions to form a united front against government proposals. The lads don't seem to know which way to turn. And Prime Minister Edouard Phlippe is already beating them with an olive branch, smilingly assuring all and sundry that he has no interest in getting into an arm-wrestling competition with anyone. Reform is needed, it will be carried out, is the smiling message which has the unions looking glum, gloomy or grim, or all three at the same time.

Silvio makes a comeback, again

The real star of Le Monde's front page is Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian former prime minister now making his umpteenth political comeback at the age of 81 and with a tan and a series of facelifts to give Kim Kardashian nightmares. His smile is painful to watch.

Silvio's right-wing coalition could very well win next weekend's vote. Which would be bad enough, so far as Le Monde is concerned, if it weren't for the fact that the alternatives are not particularly palatable either.

There's the so-called Democrats, and the Five Star movement, and Silvio, all struggling in the centre, tending towards the dark zones of anti-immigrant, anti-European feeling. And that is playing into the hands of the fourth contender, the outright far-right Matteo Salvini of the Northern League. Remember that Italy's neo-fascists did surprisingly well in the last local elections.

Le Monde's editorial says Sunday's outcome is a threat not just to Italy but to the whole of Europe.

And Europe is partly to blame, having forced the government of Mario Monti, who replaced Silvio in 2011, to instal a harsh austerity regime and then, more recently, having left the government in Rome to deal singlehandedly with the more than 600,000 refugees who have washed up on Italian shores.

Very few Italians believe in European unity anymore, says Le Monde. And, for the third most powerful economy in the so-called "union", one of the founding nations of the European experiment, that's a real tragedy. Sunday may produce even worse, it warns.

Bad news for polar bears

While Europe shivers in a late cold spell, Le Monde notes that temperatures at the North Pole have recently been 30°C higher than normal.

While the climate scientists hesitate to definitively blame climatic warming for the reversal, which has seen warmer days recently inside the Arctic Circle than in central Russia or Poland, they do stress that the polar icecap has never been so reduced at the end of the northern winter since measurements began more than 50 years ago.

If current trends continue, the Arctic could be completely ice-free during the northern summer by the year 2050.

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