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French press review 8 February 2014

The French press has its eyes glued on Sochi, the Russian Black Sea resort where the Winter Olympics kicked off on Friday. But there’s also a look at upcoming French local council elections, a Swiss immigration poll and François Hollande’s latest fall in opinion polls.

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The sports daily L’Equipe is holding its breath as France’s top biathlon sprinter Martin Fourcade launches his hunt for gold this Saturday afternoon. “It’s today”, shouts the paper and a large portrait of the Olympian is splashed across today’s front page.

Aujourd’hui en France, explaining that despite the organisers’ effort to make the “Russian Dream” lights spectacle a dream event, of colour and lights, Sochi’s inauguration did not have either the follies or the creative genius of the London Olympics.

A massive 13,000 journalists are covering the games according to Le Monde, but the paper observes that while perfect conditions have been put in place for the athletes, signs of lack of preparation are visible in parts of the Olympic village where newsmen are lodged, some journalists reporting coloured water flowing from taps, flooded floors, broken doorknobs and snatched curtain rails.

It is a summit for the glory of Russian President Vladimir Putin, writes Libération. The paper highlights a report by the Global Anti-corruption Fund pointing to evidence of widespread graft in the attribution of contracts for the construction of Olympic village, with up to 34 per cent of the tenders won by Putin’s friends.

Everyone has known since the 1936 Berlin games that the Olympics are exposed to political interference, writes Le Figaro.

The paper argues that Putin’s games will be no exception to the rule as he has put in everything he can to the point that some Western countries are tempted to organise a worldwide referendum on his record, the colossal cost of the Olympic project, suspicions of corruption and especially human rights abuses in Russia.

According to Le Figaro, Putin is unruffled by the Western campaign of criticism of the Sochi games. It smacks of hypocrisy, says the paper, that the same Western leaders criticizing the Russian leader are crowding around the Kremlin for commercial and diplomatic reasons.

Le Monde is already looking forward to French local elections due in March. It names 85 left-run cities which could fall into the hands of the right-wing opposition UMP. According to the paper, 130 cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants are likely to change hands, only 45 of them currently under UMP rule. The far-right Front National hopes to win a dozen or so cities. Le Monde claims that the Socialists and their allies are upbeat about averting a crushing defeat similar to the debacles suffered in 1983 and 2001.

Le Monde also investigates “Switzerland’s temptation to fortify its borders”. This is as voters go to the polls on Sunday to decide on a government proposal for immigration quotas and to renegotiate the free movement accord signed with the European Union.

More than 23 per cent of Switzerland’s eight million inhabitants are immigrants, according to Le Monde, mainly from Italy, Germany, Portugal and France. The paper claims that an estimated 130,000 French citizens work in Switzerland, while living in France.

And today’s Le Figaro is crowing about President François Hollande’s record unpopularity. It’s down to 19 per cent according to a new TNS-Sofres survey for Le Figaro Magazine. The paper wonders how the president can carry out a range of difficult and unpopular economic reforms when the vast majority of citizens have lost confidence in him.

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