French press review 9 March 2012

The environment and climate change dominate the headlines with special attention to the situation in the Japan one year after the devastating tsunami which badly damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The 27 EU member states are due to meet later today for a regular Council meeting. But according to centrist Le Monde, Poland is poised to cause controversy over its stance on climate change.

Poland, which gets 50 per cent of its energy from coal,  has been agitating against EU-wide climate change proposals since it joined the Union in 2004, the paper says.

The plan is for the EU member states to agree on a road map for climate initiatives aimed at cutting emissions by 2050. But Poland is apparently going to use its veto to bloc the proposals.

The Chinese are also annoyed by the EU's climate policies, according to Le Figaro.

The EU imposed a carbon tax on the first of January this year, which is biting into the profits of airline companies, including Air China. This, the paper says, has prompted Beijing to cancel an order for 45 Airbus A380 and A330 planes, which are produced in Europe.

And it's not only China that is annoyed with the EU, the paper claims that Indian and Russian airline companies are overlooking Airbus in favour of US-made Boeing planes.

In a second environment-focused article just beneath that one, Le Monde looks at the phenomenon of green-washing. This is when companies renowned for contributing to environmental destruction, claim to be providing solutions to climate change.

An organization called the Independent Publicity Observatory here in France, which raises public awareness of green-washing, has been winning some legal battles, the paper says.

Big French companies such as the supermarket chain Leclerc, and the cosmetics giant Yves Rocher have found themselves in the firing line of the Observatory. Both of which were forced to pull advertising campaigns that made false claims about their environmental achievements.

But not everyone agrees with the Observatory’s tactics. Romain Pocherain with the organization Friends of the Earth is quoted as saying that if big companies are named and shamed in this way, then it’ll put other companies off even trying to change their environmental footprint.

Staying with the environment, Libération dedicates its front page to the earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear catastrophy that struck Japan exactly a year ago.

Seven pages in total are devoted to the anniversary. Japan hasn't stopped asking why the catastrophy happened? Not in the scientific sense, but rather spiritually.

The people interviewed all talk of physical loss in terms of their homes having been destroyed. But the emotional loss is by far the most difficult thing to recover from, the paper says.

The editorial is also devoted to Japan's reconstruction efforts. It is largely complimentary of the way people have pulled together and shown courage in the face of such adversity. But there is also criticism of the government's handling of the nuclear disaster.