French press review 18 April 2013

France is beiing torn asunder. That's if you choose to believe the front page of the normally optimistic Catholic daily, La Croix.

The headline is harmless enough: "France under pressure". But the small print explains that the combined effects of the economic crisis and more recent and far more divisive social debates, like the dispute about marriage for everyone, have damaged what the paper calls "the nation's social cohesiveness".

La Croix has taken a clear and consistent stance against homosexual marriage. In fairness, it has shown a degree of balance and compassion not always matched by some of the more violent opponents to the law allowing same-sex marriage. And La Croix's analysis of the social collapse does not end there.

Rich against poor; workers against the unemployed, the retired; private sector against public; heterosexuals against homosexuals, all are being divided, it says.

Libération says the violence which has marred the debate about homosexual marriage is evidence of the emergence of a new and dangerous element on the French far right. Young, conservative and ultra-Catholic, these activists reject democracy and claim divine validation for their actions.

Worse, says Libé, several denizens of the mainstream right have added to the legitimacy of these fundamentalists, for example former president Nicolas Sarkozy's housing minister, Christine Boutin with her talk of "civil war" or Jean-François Copé, who blamed the goverrnment for the violence perpetrated by Catholic activists during a recent demonstration against marriage for all.

To return to La Croix and its view through the torn tissue of French society, there's the problem of the trade unions in a troubled economy under a Socialist government; the broader question of religious affiliation in a society which is technically neutral; and the pressure on organised charities as money becomes ever more scarce.

The combined effect of all this, for La Croix, is a society composed of tiny interest groups, with no lines of intercommunication and no broad vision of where France as a whole is headed. That, presumably, is the business of government. But the politicians have other, arguably more pressing, problems.

Le Monde says the government's growth predictions . . . none-too-optimistic at one tenth of one per cent . . . are exaggerated in the estimation of both the International Monetary Fund and the council supposed to keep an independent eye on government finance. Growth, even measured in fractions of a per cent, is off the menu. France is facing recession.

Communist L'Humanité says we're going down the tubes. The government has accepted the budgetary line laid down by Brussels and will try to knock 14 billion euros off the public spending bill, it points out. That means less money for pensions and social welfare, whimpers L'Humanité, and also less money for getting the economy moving again.