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French press review 16 April 2015

The French press is enraged by the EU's silence as 400 migrants drown at sea trying to reach to Europe. France's top audit court blocks the Socialist government's flagship bill on asylum law reform, and a sea of tears as Barcelona wrecks Paris Saint-Germain's Champions League dreams.

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L’Humanité reports that the 400 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean on the day Italian coast guards rescued 6,500 migrants trying to reach Europe. More than 900 asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and especially Syria ravaged by civil war have so far died in the high seas since the start of the year.

The daily accuses Europe of “remaining silent about the tragedy taking place on its borders as the boat people sink”, while traffickers take advantage of the chaos prevailing in Libya.

La Croix runs a special supplement on the “tragic fate” of the migrants. The paper wonders how Europe can afford to be torn between impotence and passivity while Italy struggles with 80,000 asylum seekers fished out of its territorial waters. For La Croix, the EU’s posture is untenable following projections by Europe’s external borders agency FRONTEX that up to a million more boat people could try the adventure to Europe by the end of 2015.

The worsening humanitarian emergency on the gates of Europe coincides with a heated debate at the French parliament on the Socialist government’s proposed reform of asylum laws. Le Figaro reports that the bill is now in jeopardy after the accounts court called for a postponement of the vote.

The quasi-judicial body in charge of financial and legislative audits of public institutions and policies argued in its judgement that the draft law doesn’t go far enough to overhaul the French asylum system in unbelievable decay.

Le Figaro says that the court’s main bone of contention with the draft legislation is that it doesn’t respond to the key question of what to do with the majority of asylum candidates whose files are rejected. Close to 65,000 illegal immigrants applied for asylum in France in 2014 against 36,000 in 2007.

As Le Figaro points out, opposition lawmakers are battling to shorten the five-year wait period on the argument that long asylum procedures are attractive enough to lure illegal immigrants to France.

Europe opens fire on Google, headlines Libération after the EU on Wednesday formally charged the US internet giant with abusing its search engine’s dominance. Le Monde reports that the EU Commission had been probing Google abuses for five full years, especially its omnipresent Android cell phone operating system. It accused Google of "systematic favouring its own comparison shopping product in its general search results pages".

Le Figaro says Europe has enough evidence to break the monopoly enjoyed by the American giant after collecting evidence that Google has been copying rivals’ web content and putting undue restrictions on advertisers, identified in probes dating back to 2010.

Libération reports that if Google is ruled to be at fault with EU antitrust rules the company could face a fine of up to 10 per cent of its annual sales – which in Google’s case stood at 61 billion euros in 2014.

"Delusion", "PSG tumbles from the skies", "Barcelona breaks PSG’s Champion League Dreams". Such are the captions of Thursday’s French papers as they come to terms with Barça’s 3-1 thrashing of the French giants in their first leg Champions League quarter final at the Parc de Princes Wednesday.

For the sport daily L’Equipe it was a severe but logical defeat, which means that even before the second leg at the Camp Nou stadium, PSG have virtually squandered their chances of qualifying for the semi-finals.

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