French press review 10 July 2014

French budget, UMP party and the German national football team are all in the papers today.

Le Monde looks at the French budget, describing President François Hollande's cost-cutting plan for government ministries as "unprecedented".

This is part of the plan to save 50 billion euros in state spending between now and 2017. Eighteen billion will have to be shaved off the ministerial money mountain this year, with letters in the post telling each minister exactly how little he or she can spend between now and Christmas.

Everyone knows, of course, that government spending never really diminishes . . . inflation takes care of that. But you have to admire the lads for going through the motions with such enthusiasm.

Communist L'Humanité says the Socialist Party has sold out and become a bunch of lame-dog liberal socialists. The communist daily points out that Manuel Valls, now the prime minister and arguably the most influential figure on the mainstream left, managed to collect only six per cent of votes in the party's presidential primary back in 2011.

Left-leaning Libération looks at the conservative UMP party, gleefully wondering if the threatened return of former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to the political arena might not be just what's needed to blow the debt-ridden, rudderless, right-wing party to smithereens.

Right now, the leadership of the UMP is being quietly, if viciously, contested between François Fillon, Alain Juppé and - assuming he doesn't go to jail - Jean-François Copé. But Sarko is the sort of man to bring a gun to a knife fight and that has the other lads worried. Fillon is determined but politically weak, says Libé.

Juppé is very popular, particularly among the well-heeled UMP voters of Bordeaux, but is not sure he wants to get into a fight of any sort.

Copé has been temporarily sidelined by legal difficulties but won't be out of the game for long. And then there are the minor players, like former labour minister Xavier Bertrand, who believe that the UMP has seen its best days and should be quietly retired. Which brings us to Sarkozy, currently pursued by a delinquence of judges in half-a-dozen scandals, involving money, money and money.

Libération says the situation is reminiscent of the Tarantino kung-fu slasher movie Kill Bill with Sarko in the title role.

But the left-wing daily laments that, instead of the coherent opposition which the country so badly needs, providing constructive criticism and suggesting alternatives, we get a French version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Great fun to watch. Bad news for the future of France.

Catholic La Croix looks across the Rhine at the gleaming towers and spires of Germany, dramatically triumphant at the World Cup, greedily devouring everything on the world plate. How, wonders the Catholic daily, do they manage it?

Apparently, the answer, both on and off the pitch, is to be found in the German capacity for constructive self-criticism, and an ability for team work.

In crushing World Cup hosts Brazil earlier this week, the German national football team showed the same qualities of self-belief and cohesion which are, according to La Croix, the secret ingredient of the national economy. And the German education system is good at promoting talent rather than creating failures.

Viewed from Brazil, the sad and historic defeat of their national team will boost the stock of those who've been saying all along that the money spent on rebuilding stadiums should have gone to dilapidated hospitals and schools.