Skip to main content

French press review 29 September 2014

The French Senate, family policy, the future of Air France, and Syria are this morning's front-page stories.

Advertising

Elections for half the seats in the French upper house took place yesterday, with the left wing losing the majority they've held there for the past three years. This hasn't come as much of a surprise, since 96 per cent of the voters in the senate election are chosen in the municipal elections, which were already a complete disaster for the left.

Communist L'Humanité says Hollande and Valls have offered the Senate to the right on a platter.

The communist daily accepts that the poor showing by the socialists in this year's local elections made yesterday's defeat predictable. But, says L'Humanité, local politicians also used yesterday's senate vote as a way of indicating their disapproval of government plans for redrawing the map of France's administrative regions, their dislike of the new junior school timetable, to say nothing of their feelings about cuts in funding from central government.

It's a largely symbolic defeat, says L'Humanité, but it will give the right wing yet another stick with which to beat the government. The communist daily even goes as far as to suggest that the new balance in the French upper house of parliament may be good news for President Hollande and his socialist fellow travellers says L'Humanité. It will be less symbolically disastrous for the left to see their proposed laws rejected by an upper house dominated by the right, than to see a majority of left-wing senators refuse to support laws proposed by some of their colleagues at the National Assembly.

The communist paper also points out that the loss of the left wing Senate majority will mean the end of any hope of changing the law giving voting rights to foreigners, one of François Hollande's election promises, because such a change would affect the French constitution and can only be passed if it receives majority support in both houses of parliament.

Conservative paper Le Figaro is delighted by this latest defeat for the left, and what the right-wing paper calls the administration's trappings of "amateurism, sectarianism, monetarism and paralysis". Le Figaro says there'll be more of the same, as the right can be expected to continue to pound the socialists in the next two rounds of local elections. But, says the right-wing paper, the main stream conservative UMP party has no reason to congratulate itself on any of these "victories by default". The left has made such a mess of the country in the past 29 months that anyone could beat them. Whoever takes up the reins of the right-wing majority party will need to bring along some realistic and workable policies.

Later today, the French lower house will debate the social security budget, with cuts expected nearly everywhere. Parental leave is one of the areas likely to be hit, with a probable reduction in the bonus paid to new parents, and a freeze of payments to needy families.

Catholic La Croix understands that savings have got to be made, but the paper wonders if penalising families is not counter-productive in the long run, since a diminishing birth rate now means fewer producers, consumers, investors and business start-ups tomorrow. And the French social security budget is already in trouble because of the pressure of its aging population on medical facilities and retirement benefits.

The immediate future of Air France is clear for the first time in two weeks: the pilots' strike is over, and flights should be back to normal by tomorrow. The root cause of the dispute, estimated to have cost the airline 300 million euros, remains unresolved. Management say they need to increase Air France's share of the budget travel market, something you can't do while paying pilots 196,000 euros per year. The pilots fear that a two-tier salary system . . . lots for Air France - lots less for a proposed budget wing . . .  - will eventually see all salaries in the group come down.

Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning

Keep up to date with international news by downloading the RFI app

Share :
Page not found

The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore.