French press review, 17 September 2010

Making the front page of nearly all the papers today is the story of the bust up yesterday between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, over the question of France’s deportation of Roma people.

The Roma question wasn’t even on the agenda at the European Union summit in Brussels yesterday, but it did a very good job of working its way to the top of it.

The EU’s Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding started a war of words earlier this week when she likened France’s expulsion of Roma to the deportation of Jews during the Second World War.

Left-leaning Libération reports on what’s been described as the "testosterone-heavy" and "fierce" lunchtime dispute between Sarkozy and Barroso in which Sarkozy told Barosso that Reding’s comparison to the Nazi regime was outrageous.

Despite the fact that several sources confirmed the dispute, Sarkozy has denied that he fought with Barroso, and government-friendly Le Figaro quotes Sarkozy on its front page as saying: “if anyone kept their calm, it was me!”

Reding later said that she regretted her choice of comparison and withdrew her comments … but that was too late for Sarkozy who said her comments had deeply offended and insulted the French people.

Back to Libération where the plot thickens. It reports that German chancellor Angela Merkel also denounced Reding’s WWII reference, but just as Sarkozy thought he was getting a little support from France’s closest ally, he’s now accused of somewhat clumsily dragging Germany into the feud.

The paper quotes the president of the Republic saying yesterday that Merkel had told him that Berlin would shortly order a similar expulsion of Roma. An assertion her office immediately denied.

The EU is threatening legal action against France for its expulsion of Roma, and the country could have to pay a hefty fine if found guilty of breaking EU law, but the French president continues to defend his stance on the deportations saying that any country accommodating illegal immigrants has the right to deport them.

Most of the papers also carry a story regarding the malaise of the French health service.

Sarkozy is getting ready to pick-pocket the sick says Communist daily l’Humanité.

The government needs to save an estimated 2.5 billion euros within the health service next year, in order for the public health system to survive.

Every year government spending on healthcare goes up an estimated 2.9 per cent and Sarkozy has drawn a line under that and has fixed the deficit at 12 billion euros.

He’s going to try to claw back the 2.5 billion he wants to save by 2011 through a series of reimbursement adjustments.

When the French go to the doctors they pay 22 euros for the pleasure and are currently reimbursed 70 per cent of that figure.

This is going to go down to 69.5 per cent, creating a saving of 200 million dollars, the government says.

The reimbursement of other medical services such as physiotherapists or psychologists will go down from 35 to 30 per cent, giving the government an extra 165 million to play with.

There are other similar reductions planned but it’s the reimbursement of medicine that sees the sharpest cut back. Where once upon a time the French were reimbursed 35 per cent of their drug money, they will now only receive 15 per cent back.

And for a country which loves to ply its patients with a prescription as long as their arm for such maladies as the common cold, this cut is not going down well with the French taxpayer.

Sticking with the theme of healthcare, an interesting story in Libération is that there are signs of improvement in combating Aids.

Alarmingly, everyday 7,500 people are infected by the virus and 5,500 others die because they don’t have access to HIV prevention or treatment.

Behind these staggering numbers, however, hide some encouraging initiatives which have won some small victories, according to a UN report dedicated to the sixth millennium goal: to combat Aids, Malaria and other infectious diseases.

According to the UN, the spread of the virus seems to have stabilised. In 2008 there were 2.7 million new infections, against 3.5 million in 1996.

With three quarters of new infections in 2008, sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most affected.

There are an estimated 33.4 million people living with Aids worldwide and 5 million are under treatment.

Putting this many patients on treatment has exceeded all expectations, the paper reports, since when anti-retroviral drugs were introduced in 2003 only 400,000 people benefitted from them.