French press review 16 June 2015

What would a Greek departure from the euro zone really mean, for both Europe and the Greeks? Does current French labour legislation protect the worker and promote employment, or are the rules too complicated? And is it possible to pass the school leaving exam even if you can't spell baccalauréat?

Thank God for right-wing paper Le Figaro. While the rest of the nation's dailies are worrying about Greek debt, French labour law or the possibility of yet another President Bush in the Washington White House, Le Figaro gets to the heart of the matter.

What is wrong with the nation, possibly even the world, is that French kids can't spell.

As final revision continues for the school-leaving baccalauréat exams, Le Fiagro reveals the shocking fact that examiners have been told to go easy on candidates who are weak in spelling.

The conservative daily is scandalised that the quality of written expression continues to decline, and Le Figaro wants to know who is to blame. The fact is that the amount of time devoted to the study of French in French schools has been reduced by several hours over the past fifty years. And, tut-tuts Le Figaro, teaching staff are not universally up to scratch in the spelling stakes either.

The Figaro editorial compares the strict rules imposed in the domains of ecology, health and road safety with the ever more lax attitude to rules of spelling. The writer accepts that a misspelling has probably never killed anyone, and hardly puts the planet in danger. But we need clarity and consistency in writing as in thinking, he says, and must resist the encroachments of barbarism.

Vigilance is a key word in contemporary France. We are asked to be careful about what we eat, what we throw away, where we leave our wallets and suitcases. Let us be equally vigilant, pleads Le Figaro, about how we write the language of Molière.

Catholic La Croix attempts to imagine what will happen if Greece really does leave the unhappy fiscal family known as the European Monetary Union.

This is yet another one of those "decisive weeks" in the Greek debt drama, with nobody seeming seriously to believe that Athens is going to be let slink off without paying back the gazillions of euros various Greek governments have borrowed to keep their bankrupt nation from going into the ditch.

The world markets are certainly showing signs of worry, with lots of money being taken out of the system by investors who fear that the shit and the fan are uncomfortably close to one another.

Even if the Greeks don't borrow enough to pay what they owe by the end of this month, they will still have six weeks before being declared technically broke.

But, at the end of all that, what if they really were to leave the euro?

Greeks would instantly become a lot poorer, says La Croix. This is based on the fact that Athens imports a huge amount, even of the most basis essentials. If they return to the pre-euro drachma under current conditions, the Greeks will have a currency worth anything between 50 and 70 per cent less than the euro, meaning that those imports are going to cost between 50 and 70 per cent more.

But Europe won't get off lightly either, losing a fortune as it says farewel to any chance of a Greek pay-back. France, for example, will see 40 billion euros go down the tubes. That's the equivalent of 615 euros for every French citizen.

And then there are the unpredictable financial, political and social consequences of a Greek departure.

If Greece goes, suggests La Croix, it could be the beginning of the end for European unity.

Le Monde gives pride of place to "The new battle over French labour law".

You'll know that the government is attempting to simplify employment legislation in the hope of boosting the jobs market.

Writing in Le Monde, the fomer minister and senator, Robert Badinter describes current labour law as "overweight" and "a cancer" for French society. There were 600 articles in the French statutes on work in 1974; four decades later that number has risen to 8,000.

That complexity has had the effect of scaring employers, especially in small businesses which can't afford the services of a lawyer to explain the small print.

And workers are similarly uncertain what the meanders of the law imply for them and their futures.

What is needed, says Badinter, is a clear statement of a few fundamental principles. Then the existing jungle of labour regulations can be cleared to the benefit of all concerned, not least France's three-and-a-half million unemployed.