French press review 26 May 2011

Apart from communist L'Humanité, there's mostly good news on the front pages of Thursday's French newspapers.

From the front-page of Le Figaro, news of a solomonic decision by the good men who run the Brussels metro.

Fed up with complaints from French-speakers who object to Flemish musak in the stations and corridors of the public transport system, and equally annoying complaints from Flemish-speakers who can't stand French crooners, the metro men have decided to ban all music in both languages.

In the Brussels underground, the public music is now all English, take it or leave it.

It's no joke, of course, since the linguistic dispute means that Belgium has had no government since the last general election, almost exactly 12 months ago.

Jacques Brel, who was born in a Brussels suburb and who wrote a lot of songs, in French, about human stupidity, is thus banned from the metro in his home city. If he was still around, he'd probably write a song about it. In English, of course.

If you leave communist L'Humanité out of the equation, there's mostly good news on this morning's front pages.

Le Monde's main headline has the French Economy Minister, Christine Lagarde, as the front-runner to take over the International Monetary Fund . . . confirmation of her candidacy is good news for France, for Europe's struggling economies and for women.

If she gets the job, Lagarde will be the first woman to be IMF director general since the institution was founded in 1945.

Le Figaro's bit of good news is that "Unemployment continues to drop in France".

For the fourth month in succession, the number of people out of work has decreased, this time by nearly 11,000.

The vast majority of those starting their new jobs are in the under-25 age group.

Sadly, the number of those out of work in the over-50 group, and the number of long-time unemployed continue to increase.

Business daily Les Echos has "Surprising improvement in world growth". It's all speculation, of course, but for a change, it's positive speculation.

The French economy, for example, was expected to grow by a paltry 1.6 per cent this year.

Now, according to new figures released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the French growth rate will actually work out at 2.2 per cent.

Still paltry by Chinese standards, but respectable when you consider that the original estimation for the United States was the same 2.2 per cent, now up to 2.6 per cent.

As with all silver linings, this one comes with a cloud attached.  Les Echos warns that world growth could still be halted by a further increase in oil prices, by a slowdown in Chinese consumption, by the collapse of the property market, or by sovereign debt problems in the Eurozone.

Libération has the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on the front page.

He's happy that the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal is finally off the front pages, he's also boosted because the French finance minister is in line to take over the top job at the International Monetary Fund, and he's off today to Deauville to welcome the leaders of the world's richest economies to the Normandy Hotel, where the G8 summit will take place over the next two days.

Incidentally, the G8 is not just about the rich and powerful. There will also be representatives from Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Guinea, Senegal and half-a-dozen other African nations.

The two-day meeting is going to cost 20 million euros.

Catholic La Croix also looks forward to the Deauville summit, saying that the participants will have to hammer out some kind of coherent policy to help those Arab nations which have recently overthrown dictatorial regimes. Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria will all be represented.

Which brings me back to L'Humanité, which is not confident that the G8 leaders can save the world.

"Banksters' Ball" is the clever headline, mixing gangster and banker and suggesting that the leaders will party in luxury while the rest of us continue to go down the tubes.

L'Humanité's inside headline reads "World masters with feet of clay".

It's all either very cynical, or tragically very true.

Less positively, Catholic daily La Croix looks to Spain where young people have been protesting in Madrid against what they see as their bleak future and the inaction of the political class.

According to La Croix, the Spanish unrest is causing ripples in Portugal, Greece and Italy, and shows more than superficial similarities with the wave of protest which swept Arab north Africa earlier this year.

A man with the very distinguished name of Paul Girot de Langlade appeared before the Paris Appeals Court yesterday, attempting to overturn an earlier conviction for racist remarks and a fine of 1,500 euros.

In July 2009, Monsieur Langlade arrived back from holidays on the French island of Réunion. On his way to a connecting flight, he set off the alarm in the airport security check.

When the staff took an interest in him, the good man observed that "he might as well be in Africa," an observation which understandably offended two black women security officers.

During his original trial, Paul Girot de Langlade said he wasn't talking about the security offers but about the fact that Africa is synonomous with chaos.

"And I know what I'm talking about," he assured the court, "I've been to Africa, and there's not a single country that works properly. Everybody knows that."

The appeals court is considering its verdict.