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France

French press review 19 May 2014

The French dailies are all about next weekend's European elections.

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Le Monde predicts that the radical left, led by the charismatic Greek opposition figure, Alexis Tsipras, is likely to out-shine the Green Party when the dust settles after next Sunday's one-shot elections to choose a new European Parliament.

The centrist newspaper sees this drift away from a concern for the environment and towards extreme left-wing policies as a direct result of the Brussels-imposed diet of hardship, austerity and cuts.

Those countries most squeezed by the so-called "troika" - that's the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - are the places where the swing will be most obvious. The extreme Left may beat all other European contenders in Greece, and is expected to do well in Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Cyprus.

And, whatever effect such a shift may have in the European parliament, it could have a dramatic impact in Greece where old Alexis says he'll use a strong showing in Europe to call for early elections back home, and will then start running Greece on extreme left lines.

Right wing Le Figaro says French president François Hollande and his socialist mates are scared they're going to get the stuffing knocked out of them, again, next weekend.

In the wake of the socialist rout in the recent municipal elections, most opinion polls suggest the socialist are in for another hiding on Sunday. This time, says Le Monde, the likely beneficiaries will be the extremist right wing National Front.

The problem is that the anti-Eur

opean stance of the National Front is shared by a swarm of parties spawned by the crisis, either nationalist, independentist, anti-liberal, europhobic, and an alliance involving these entities, many of which have never before contested an election of any description, could make the running of the European Parliament even more complicated than it already is.

Briefly, before we leave Le Figaro, the right wing paper interviews Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the austere gentleman who took up his duties as French president on this day forty years ago. He says the problem with the current generation of French politicians is that they don't have the courage to tell people they have to make sacrifices. And the electorate is no better: instead of choosing competent leaders, people now vote for those they think will do something for them.

CatholicLa Croix looks to the Central African capital, Bangui, specifically at the precarious existence of the few muslims who have stayed in the wake of the campaign by so-called christians to get rid of the city's muslim population.

AndLibération looks at the resumption of the transAtlantic trade talks, wondering if the impenetrable secrecy surrounding the negotiations is not simply fueling the campaigns of the euro-sceptics.

Communist L'Humanité gives pride of place to what they call a social clinic, flourishing in the centre of the Greek capital, Athens. Fed up with austerity and "catastroika," ordinary Greeks who still have social security coverage have started collecting medicines for those who are out of cover. The whole operation is run on a voluntary basis.

One quarter of Greek children live in poverty, and the country last year saw the first rise in infant mortality since 1950. Sixty per cent of Greeks under the age of 25 don't have jobs. Is it any wonder Alexis Tsipras is shaping up to take over?

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