French press review 11 March 2015

The deaths of three French sports stars, along with five other French citizens and the two Argentine pilots, in a helicopter accident in Argentina on Monday dominate this morning's front pages.

The three were among 10 people who lost their lives in a crash during the filming of a French TV programme. Le Monde wonders at the enduring relationship between top-class sports personalities and "reality television".

French goalkeeper Pascal Olmeta, Tour de France cyclist Richard Virenque and tennis star Henri Leconte are just the top end of a long list of famous names who've graced programmes which generally involve people running around exotic locations while wearing very few clothes.

Some of them do it for the money. According to Frédérique Jossinet, Olympic silver medalist in judo a decade ago, a programme like Koh Lanta (Survivor in English) offers at least 150,000 euros to star participants. There's also the question of public recognition. Jossinet says her Athens silver medal changed nothing in her daily life but being seen by 12 million people every Friday night for a summer turned her into a megastar. And there's also the competitive aspect of such programmes and the adrenalin boost.

Other top sportpersons talk of the need to be recognised for something other than their chosen discipline and a desire to leave the daily grind of training behind for a few weeks in the sun.

Our sympathies to the families and friends of all those who died in Monday's accident.

Pierre Moscovici is on the front page of conservative paper,Le Figaro, grimly warning his former government colleagues in Paris that France is not doing enough to get the budget deficit under control. He'd know a thing or two about that.

In case you've forgotten, Moscovici used to be the French economy minister before being sent off to Brussels to become the European commissioner for Greek debt and other disasters.

One of those other disasters, as Le Figaro is only too happy to repeat on a daily basis, is France and the paper quotes Pierre, wearing his European helmet, praising the Valls government for "undeniable" attempts to reform but, alas, finding that French efforts are simply not going to be enough to get the economy back on a balanced footing.

The man from Brussels would like to see the vague promises made by Paris turned into legislative reality. Moscovici says the French economy is going to be subject to stringent examination by Brussels and, if the worst comes to the worst, sanctions will be imposed.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin says all talk of sanctions is simply playing into the hands of the political extremists.

And then there's Silvio Berlusconi.

According to Le Monde, the former Italian prime minister has now been definitively acquitted in the Ruby affair, a case which saw Silvio sent to jail for seven years in June 2013. He was accused of inciting a minor to engage in prostitution and of abuse of power.

Yesterday the Italian appeals court decided that Berlusconi could not reasonably have known that Ruby, or Karima El Mahroug, now 17, was barely 14 years old at the time of her participation in orgies at the media magnate's villa. Neither did Berlusconi exert undue pressure on a Milan court to get Karima off the hook when she was charged with stealing, it concluded.

This is clearly good news for our man Silvio, who has just recently ended his year of court-imposed visits to an old people's home following his conviction for tax evasion. But he's not out of the judicial wood by a long shot.

Il Cavaliere still faces trial on charges that he offered an Italian senator three million euros to quit the left-wing coalition supporting Romano Prodi in 2008. If that doesn't get him, he might still go to jail for allegedly paying adolescent girls to testify that he was a harmless, cuddly old gentleman during the original Ruby trial.

Political analysts in Italy say that, no matter what happens in the courts, Silvio's political goose is cooked. He won't be making a comeback. It comes down to a question of mathematics: Matteo Renzi, the current prime minister, is 40 years old. Matteo Salvini, friend of Marine Le Pen and leader of the far right Northern League is 42. Silvio is 78. Bye, bye Berlusconi.