French press review 3 January 2012

Presidential hopefuls in the US and France, bumper sales of Champagne and the "social sales tax" all feature on the pages of today's French dailies...

Both centrist Le Monde and right-wing Le Figaro give front-page prominence to the same question: who will America's Republicans choose to go into this year's US presidential showdown against Barack Obama?

For the moment, as the Republicans prepare for today's first primary in Iowa, Mitt Romney would seem to be the man with the wind in his sails and, much more importantly, the money in his pockets.

But he has to stay ahead of six other contenders, like the Texan Ron Paul, who hates taxes but favours homosexual marriage, or the ultra-Catholic Rick Santorum who hates just about everything except prayer and penance.

Each will have his or her supporters. It remains to be seen whether Romney has the personal and political capacities to pull the various strands of Republican politics together.

Iowa is important, says Le Figaro, but it is far from decisive. In 2008, the Iowa primary was won by a fellah called Mike Huckabee, and you'd need a fairly detailed history book to find any mention of him since.

The right-wing daily makes the rather tenuous comparison with the situation in France, where the Socialist François Hollande will take on an as-yet-to-be-named right-wing candidate.

Says Figaro, Romney is not hugely popular, and has based his public utterances so far on the errors of his opponents. He seems to lack charm and an ability to make clear decisions. Just like François Hollande, according to the Figaro front page editorial.

Catholic La Croix also looks to the Iowa primary, saying that the divisive effect of Obama's health care policy has demolished the great American myth of a shared basic vision between Republicans and Democrats.

The battle lines are clearly drawn; both sides recognise the importance of the middle classes, currently worried about the future. While the Republicans vote in Iowa, Barack Obama will be firing a few shots of his own, in nearby Ohio.

Le Monde also reports that last year looks like being the second best in history for the sale of champagne.

The doubt concerns the precise number of bottles sold in November and December, but at somewhere between 327 and 330 million bottles of fizz, the champagne industry has seen at least a 3% increase in sales.

The bad news is that small producers are being forced off their plots by the big companies, avid to increase their holdings inside the strictly limited area in which champagne can be produced.

One small clarification: the increase in sales is entirely due to the export market. The French drank less champagne in 2011 than they did in 2010. The financial crisis may be fiction elsewhere, but it's real here in France.

The front page of communist L'Humanité has a cartoon of President Sarkozy, six-shooter and swag-bag in hand, preparing to rob the nation's workers once again.

The bone of contention this time is the so-called "social sales tax", an effort, according to the government, to take the pressure of financing social security off employers, who can move their production to Tunisia or Taiwan or Timbucktoo.

Instead, the theory goes, let's tax the things people actually buy, so that imports from Tunisia or Taiwan or Timbucktoo make a real contribution to the social welfare budget.

Communist L'Humanité sees the whole plan as another gift from Nicolas Sarkozy to the big bosses.

They will no longer have to pay for social security, a service which will, according to L'Humanité, eventually have to be privatised, with disastrous results for the most needy.