French weekly magazines review 27 September 2015

The Volkswagen pollution scandal continues to give off fumes. There's praise for an old socialist and blanket condemnation of his descendants. Philosopher and ex-politico Régis Debray thinks democratic government is a sham. And weekly magazine Marianne thinks France should take in more refugees.

DR

Weekly magazine Marianne says the Volkswagen scandal has brought a number of unpalatable facts to the surface. In the first place, the myth of German engineering excellence and quality goes out the exhaust pipe.

There's the question of how serious European anti-pollution tests actually are, given that Volkswagen saw no interest in trying the same sort of cheating in Europe as the company practiced in the United States.

Marianne goes on to ask how just American justice is, especially when it deals with foreign companies. Barclays, BNP Paribas, HSBC and Total are just the biggest names to have found themselves condemned under US law for infringing Washington's embargos against Cuba or Iran.

Marianne sees that as an unfair imposition of American rules outside US territorial boundaries. What that has to do with Volkswagen's cheating is not very clear. The big worry now is to see which other European car manufacterers will turn out to be pollution cheats and what impact this scandal will have on the anti-diesel movement, to say nothing of the public health implications of a system which may have led to the underestimation of diesel pollution by a factor of 40.

The Nouvel Observateur gives the front-page honours to French Socialist president François Mitterrand, who died in Paris on 8 January 1996, having served for 14 years.

There is no shortage of books on the man . . . L'Obs suggests the figure of 500 essays, biographies and studies . . . but admirer and insider Laure Adler has just published a description of the 176 days which, according to her, forged the man and determined his fate.

It's a mixed portrait, giving a new polish to old images. Mitterrand was a famous seducer, but saw himself closer in spirit to Casanova (a lover of women) than to Don Juan (a collector of conquests). As early as 1948, when he was just 32 years old, he confidently predicted that he would one day be French president.

He had no time for what he called the intellectual left, those who debated instead of doing things. Mitterrand was not gentle with his associates but fiercely loyal to his few real friends. One of his favourite phrases was the observation by right-wing author and politician Charles Maurras to the effect that "every hopeless defeat in politics is a powerful weapon". Mitterrand's descendants might do well to keep that in mind as they prepare for December's regional elections.

The same Nouvel Observateur is harshly critical of the former president's contemporary descendants.

The magazine casts a cold eye on the Socialist government's handling of the refugee crisis and sees a political movement paralysed by the ideological domination of the mainstream right and the increasing popularity of a far-right aversion to sharing resources with foreigners. L'Obs see this as a symptom of a party suffering a serious identity crisis.

Otherwise, the current crop of Socialists get a hard time this week.

Le Point gives the cover to Régis Debray, a philosopher, academic, author and one-time adviser to Mitterrand, who fought alongside Che Guevara in Bolivia back in the '60s.

Debray has nothing but contempt for the current limping left, indeed for all political orientations, in a world where, he says, governments are terrified by the markets and by those who control the money supply. Debray despairs of a political vaudeville where voters make their choices only to have the crucial decisions taken elsewhere. Mario Draghi, Christine Lagarde and the directors of the Bundesbank are our real rulers, says Debray, asking who voted for any of them.

But he's an admirer of Mitterrand, seeing him as the man who dragged French socialism out of the 19th century, even if he wasn't quite strong enough to get it into the 21st.

Marianne says France must welcome refugees. The magazine insists on the difficult distinction between economic migrants and refugees and says France must avoid importing conflicts from elsewhere.

Very few refugees want to come to France and the migrants trapped in Calais can't wait to leave.

Lest you think that Fifa is the only organisation capable of creative accounting, Le Nouvel Observateur estimates that Sarkozy-era presidential advisor Patrick Buisson managed to extract three million euros from the public purse, often for non-existent services, between 2007 and 2012.

The magazine suggests that a full examination of the Buisson case could force a few sharp detours, to say nothing of legal roadblocks, on Sarko's route back to the presidential palace.