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French press review 10 October 2014

Papers of all persuasions are delighted to see the Nobel prize for literature go to a French author. The scrapping of the ecotax gets a cooler reception. There's speculation about tension between the president and the prime minister. And many voters take a dim view of Sarkozy's comeback.

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The Nobel committee got the French rooster crowing in delight over the surprise award of the 2014 literature prize to French writer Patrick Modiano.

The Swedish Academy said it was rewarding Modiano "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of
the occupation" of France during World War II.

Le Figaro takes special pride in pointing out that the enigmatic Proust of our time, author of La Place de l’Etoile and Rue des Boutiques Obscures, becomes the 15th Frenchman to win the literature Nobel, leaving the United States far behind with 12.

The Communist Party newspaper L’Humanité underlines that no-one imagined that another French man would win the prestigious prize just six years after Le Clézio’s coronation. It borrows a phrase from Vincent Monade, president of France's National Book Centre, who expressed delight at seeing Modiano’s award "definitively shut the mouths of those who wrote a few years ago that French culture was dead".

The Catholic daily La Croix finds a rare excuse to boast about the crowning of a truly French Nobel.

Libération for its part calls the surprise award for a French novelist, whose works are centre on memory, oblivion, identity and guilt, a celebration of a literary oeuvre that is "pure, elegant and whispered".

L’Humanité marks the birth 60 years ago of Algeria’s National Liberation Front. It comments that the 10 October 1954 memorandum by Mohamed Boudiaf and five of his companions calling for more democratic rights from the French colonial government was a risky gamble that finally paid off with all the political forces and the vast majority of Algeria’s people signing up to their call for an armed struggle.

The volte-face by French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal over the projected ecological tax for truckers attracts scornful remarks from right-wing Le Figaro. The paper reports that Royal ended up retreating because of threats by road transporters to stage an indefinite blockade of highways around the country if plans to introduce the green tax by 2015 were not abandoned.

Le Figaro notes that the retreat carries a heavy price, a 500-million-euro shortfall for the budget which the government badly needs at a time Brussels is threatening France with sanctions if Paris does not meet its target for reduction of the budget deficit.

A false note between President François Hollande and his Prime Minister Manuel Valls over the latter’s plans review unemployment benefits sends some papers into a frenzy about rising tensions in the "executive couple".

Le Figaro says the president’s unease with his premier has been exacerbated not just by Valls’s recent meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron but also by his moves to accelerate the rhythm at which the government ought to implement its reform agenda.

For the right-wing newspaper, Valls is worried that his popularity is being dragged down by Hollande’s catastrophic poll figures and is trying to boost his standing by raising sensitive issues while the president remains prudent.

Libération claims that Valls’s stance on the unemployed constitutes an excess of zeal, adding that the president’s rebuke confirms that the men have neither the same agenda nor the same political objectives.

Speaking of political objectives, 66 per cent of French voters and 42 per cent of the conservative electorate now have a negative opinion of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy’s return to politics, according to a new survey by the LH2 polling agency for Le Nouvel Observateur due out this weekend.

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