French press review 24 May 2014

More on the European elections - the vote which takes place tomorrow in France makes the front page of all three main dailies, centrist Le Monde, right-wing Le Figaro and left-wing Libération. All three a have a slightly different take on the subject.

Le Figaro boldly announces that tha ruling Socialist Party (PS) is merely a spectator in a dual that has pitted the UMP and Front National (FN) against each other, that is the main right-wing opposition and the more right-wing nationalist parties respectively.

The daily points to the fact that both parties are neck and neck in the polls. And of course the Socialists took a battering in recent local elections - a result largely blamed on failures of the government to improve the economy.

There is an almost gleeful tone to their front-page editorial pointing to the expected defeat of the Socialists but Le Figaro laments that this will probably not spur the government on to accelerate reforms. The UMP doesn't get away without criticism, either. Le Figaro says that the fact that the FN has risen to such prominence ought to give the UMP the "electroshock" it needs to get working to clamour back votes.

Le Monde on the other hand says that both the UMP and the Socialists are going to be punished in the election. The centrist daily says both main parties are more or less

resigned to the fait accompli of an FN victory, the UMP has no way of catching up now and even the Socialists' last-ditch attempt to woo voters with an annoucement that they will lower taxes is not going to have an impact on the vote.

Le Monde also points to the effect the European elections are going to have on UMP leader Jean-François Copé, already facing a scandal over alleged overpayment to associates for organising party events. Copé initially denied the allegations and then later thanked the newspaper for bringing this information to his attention. This, in addition to the likelihood the the FN are going to leapfrog the UMP as the right-wing choice in this weekend's election, means that his position at the top UMP job is threatened.

Stepping back for a moment from France's internal squabbles, Le Monde's editorial opines that "Europe is more than ever, our future". This wider European-level perspective and what is at stake has not been a theme of the French press in recent days.

"Why vote at all?" left-leaning Libération asks on its front page. It focuses on the other problem with the vote in the European elections - other than making the UMP face up to its crises and the PS to reality - and that is the expected rate of abstention.It dedicates its first 10 pages to analysis and quotes a citizen who says "I don't understand anything and, anyway, it's Mother's Day" - which sort of sums it all up, really.

Libé's editorial laments the blind instinct to punish the government whilst overlooking all the good that Europe has done in the areas of research, industry, education, food securtity and, above all, the freedom of movement for goods, capital, services and people. What a catastrophe, cries Libé, that the FN will likely top the polls, despite the fact that its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen just this week said he expected the Ebola epidemic to solve France's immigration "problem" in three months.