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French press review 6 November 2013

It's interesting to compare the front pages of business daily Les Echos and right-wing Le Figaro. Both papers give pride of place to yesterday's publication of the European Commission's economic predictions for next year.

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The predictions confirm a general end to the recession but the commission has asked for a greater effort from France and Germany, with a view to ensuring that the feeble growth anticipated is the best that can be achieved.

Those facts give rise to two very different headlines:

"Brussels asks Paris and Berlin for more," is the vaguely Dickensian way Les Echos summarises the situation.

"Brussels does not believe Hollande's promises," trumpets Le Figaro, the right-wing paper chosing to play down the fact that the commission has accepted French growth figures for the next two years, stressing instead the warning from Brussels on Paris's public spending and the worsening of the unemployment situation.

The underlying economic realities are none too heartening.

The French economy will grow next year but by less than one per cent. French unemployment will pass 11 per cent, twice the German figure, but mercifully short of the Spanish level, likely to exceed 26 per cent.

And Paris probably won't get the French public debt down to a level to calm the nerves of the international ratings agencies.

Le Figaro's editorial interprets all that to mean that France has taken the economic equivalent of a cold shower and that "the blind optimism" of the president has been "cruelly denied" by the Brussels statisticians.

The same editorial says next year's feeble growth will be swallowed up by socialist economic policies being pursued against the dictates of common sense. Taxation has paralysed both business and the consumer, adding thousands to the dole queues. Worse again, laments Le Figaro, less than no progress has been made on cutting public spending.

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