French press review 10 April 2014

The re-organisation of the French cabinet continues to interest the nation's editors, whatever about their unfortunate readers.

Le Monde belatedly looks back to Manuel Valls's speech on Tuesday, in which he outlined his global policy. The centrist paper is impressed by the energy, the determination, the muscle of the man. But they worry about the money. There's been a lot of talk about reducing expenses here, boosting allowances there, but without any explanation of where the finance will come from.

Says Le Monde, the only real commitment in Tuesday's talk was on the question of re-drawing the political map of France, halving the number of regions and completely abolishing departmental government.

Catholic La Croix looks at those very proposals, opposed in the past by François Hollande and his Socialist fellows, now presented as the bright future of a slimmer, better organised, more competitive France. Why now? asks La Croix. And will it work?

The regions (22 of them) have existed since 1982 when decentralisation was all the rage. They were supposed to replace the departments (94) but, instead, the two systems just went their parallel ways. François Hollande promised during his election campaign that he'd put an end to the waste and inefficiency of the parallel system. Except that all but one of the regions and two-thirds of the departments are currently controlled by Socialist administrations, and you don't want to be running your own people out of their comfortable little jobs.

The advantages would include creating larger, more economically viable territorial units, capable of attracting their own investment. There would obviously be fewer elected officials, fewer administrative staff and structures, less expenditure in the long term.

Will it run, politically? It would certainly be popular with the electorate, 62 per cent of whom are in favour of a blending of the regions and the departments. But perhaps less so with those they have elected, who will lose their jobs. And these are people with well organised local networks and friends in high places. Their power of resistance should not be underestimated, indeed, probably has not been by Manuel Valls, who hopes to see the whole question resolved by . . . 2021.

The other big political story concern the completion of the new government line-up with the naming of 14 State Secretaries, sort of cut-price junior ministers without the clout.

The most controversial nominee is probably Harlem Désir, former head of the Socialist Party, now state secretary for European Affairs. He's been a European deputy for the past 15 years, but does not have an impeccable attendance record, having voted at just half of all full parliamentary sessions. Critics say it is illogical to promote a man to a crucial government post when that man has just led the party to the worst electoral defeat in its history.

Popular Aujourd'hui en France says there are 600,000 unfilled jobs in unemployment-ravaged France. The sectors are home help, hospital assistance, hotels, restaurants and sales, none particularly prestigious or well-paid, but offering a way out of longterm unemployment, currently affecting one-fifth of all French people under the age of 25.