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French press review 29 August 2014

French Socialists go to La Rochelle for what promises to be a stormy get-together. Hollande hopes for help from Europe. Lagarde is in trouble in her home country. France’s Catholic right has the new education minister in its sights. And PSG are living the Uefa dream.

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As the ruling Socialist Party prepares to hold its summer workshop in the Atlantic coast city of La Rochelle, Le Monde says Prime Minister Manuel Valls stands poised to defy the movement’s dogma on industrial policy.

He is buoyed by the warm reception granted to the appointment of ex-banker Emmanuel Macron as his new economy minister by the powerful corporate chiefs’ union Medef.

Macron has sparked a storm in the Socialist Party after suggesting in an interview he accorded to Le Point days before his appointment that he was open to allowing companies and sectors of the economy to "depart from" the France’s 35-hours work-week law.

For Le Figaro Macron is right to want to free France from the 35-hour taboo. In an editorial the right-wing newspaper describes the flagship policy, introduced by the French left 14 years ago, as an aberration which France can’t afford to maintain in times of spiralling unemployment such as these. But Le Figaro points out that while Macron calls for a radical reform of working time, the unions consider it a casus belli.

Libération discusses whether Europe will come to the rescue of François Hollande, as the French president prepares for a crunch EU summit in Brussels this weekend. He hopes to line up more allies for his campaign for an economic policy driven by more stimuli and less austerity.

Hollande is banking on the transient vulnerability of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to federate European Social Democrats and seize the momentum. But the paper believes his prospects of success will depend on how quickly the summit can find the right candidate for two of the biggest jobs in Brussels, Catherine Ashton’s successor as head the bloc's foreign policy and a new EU president after Herman van Rompuy.

The situation in Ukraine will be a key point on the agenda of the Brussels summit with Le Figaro reporting about the outcry around the presence of Russian soldiers in the neighbouring country. The right-wing newspaper says Western nations have denounced the dangerous escalation, after Nato claimed in a statement that Moscow had deployed up to 1,000 soldiers in eastern Ukraine to prop up pro-Russian separatists.

Le Monde presents the judicial woes facing IMF chief Christine after a Paris court placed her under formal investigation earlier this week for "negligence" in a 2008 graft case dating back to when she was French finance minister.

The allegation relates to her handling of a 400-million-euro state payout to disgraced French tycoon Bernard Tapie in 2008. Lagarde referred the dispute between Tapie and partly state-owned bank Crédit Lyonnais to a three-member arbitration panel that ordered the payout.

Formal investigation is the nearest equivalent to being charged, according to Le Monde, but Madame Lagarde, who has led the IMF since July 2011, has stated that she has no intentions of resigning. The global lender’s board of executive directors representing the 188 member states is to hold an urgent meeting to discuss her legal status.

Libération flies to the rescue of the youthful star of the new French government, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who is in charge of the giant ministry of education at the tender age of 36. According to Libé, right-wing hawks led by the anti-gay marriage coalition now consider her the outspoken proponent of “gender theory”, which they denounce as an evil ideological plot to turn all French children into gays.

Sports daily L’Equipe crows about “perfect casting” as it analyses the prospects of French football giants Paris Saint Germain and Monaco in the Uefa Champions League after Thursday’s pool draws. According to L’Equipe, there is the superstar of European football, Barcelona, and two second-rated nice-guy sides Ajax Amsterdam and Apoel Nicosia for PSG, while Monaco will be up against three opponents within their reach – Benfica Lisbon, Zenith Saint Petersburg and Bayer Leverkusen.
 

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