French press review 24 January 2012

You could be forgiven for thinking that this morning's papers were left over from yesterday.  There's François Hollande's campaign launch (reactions to), Iran (sanctions against) and Costa Concordia (why did it happen?)  

The Socialist Party's presidential candidate, François Hollande, is still dominating the front pages, as the nation's editors try to come to terms with his first big public presentation, last Sunday in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget.

Hollande launched his campaign with an attack on the banks. But left-leaning Libération wonders if having a go at the little-loved world of high finance is a credible approach for a presidential candidate.

The banks have been discreetly replying to the Socialist leader's plans to separate the functions of ordinary finance and speculation, the first a good thing, the second very bad.

The bankers would remind Hollande that several reforms have already been put in place since the Wall Street crisis in 2008. They also warn that a separation of their activities would make banking more costly for consumers and, rattle of big sabre in background, for the state. Watch your step Frank Hollande!

The front-page editorial in today's right-wing Le Figaro celebrates the decision by European Union Foreign Ministers to ban imports of oil from Iran. The idea is to slow down Tehran's efforts to join the nuclear club and, perhaps, to short-circuit Israeli plans to take the law into their own hands and put Iranian nuclear ambitions permanently, and dramatically, out of commission. All that, says Figaro, is logical, lucid and consistent.

But, of the 20 per cent if Iranian crude oil which Europe has, up to now, been buying, Greece, Italy and Spain are the main consumers. Debt-racked and struggling, Athens, Rome and Madrid will now have to find other sources of supply. And the European embargo is not going to make oil any cheaper on world markets. Europe's leaders hope that increased production in Libya and Iraq will make up for closing the tap on Tehran.

The real winners are India, China, Japan and South Korea . . . the other big buyers of Iranian juice. They can expect to pay slightly less to a supplier who suddenly finds himself with a 20 per cent surplus on his hands. Of course, the Europeans and the Americans will expect the Asians to impose their own embargos, at the risk of seeing their commercial relations with the West brought into question. Cheap oil or an empty order book? It will be interesting to see how the men who run China will deal with that one.

And will the oil embargo work?

Probably not, says Le Figaro, because Tehran's military programme is more important than another round of financial hardship and there'll always be buyers for cheap crude. It might stop the Israelis from launching a regional war, even if their clandestine efforts against computer systems, nuclear specialists and suspect installations are likely to continue.

Communist L'Humanité looks at the world of the luxury cruise in the wake of the Costa Concordia accident. The communist daily says that in the big passenger boat business  everything has been sacrificed in the pursuit of bigger profits, with security frequently the first thing thrown overboard.