French press review 17 April 2015

Big businesses in big trouble, a nuclear war that could cost France its prime position in the global market for atomic electricity, crtitics who say the education minister could do better on proposed reforms of the secondary programme and the vexed question of taxation, all subjects making this morning's French front pages.

France is worried about the future of its industrial giants . . . that's according to the front page of Catholic daily, La Croix.

The reason the paper gives such prominence to a story basically about filthy lucre is that this week has seen two major French companies - the cement maker Lafarge and technology wizards Alcatel-Lucent - swallowed up by foreigners. France has already lost control of the holiday company Club Med and of the energy division of the engineering operation, Alstom. All this translates, says La Croix, into a further dimming of the French star on the world stage and leaves question marks over the local investment and employment policies of the new owners.

The basic message is, however, a reassuring one: the weak euro and the morose economic climate currently make French companies attractive targets. But these recent acquisitions are essentially an indication of investor confidence in the French and broader European market in the long term.

Left-leaning Libération gives pride of place to French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, suggesting that he's got a nuclear war on his hands.

There's no need to take shelter. This nuclear battle is all about defending the global reputation of France as a leader in the design and construction of atomic electricity generation stations. That reputation is currently struggling on home soil where the Flamanville reactor in Normandy is hugely over budget and not exactly up to the industry's stringent security norms.

In a world market contracting ever since the Fukushima disaster in Japan, France cannot afford to have its nuclear sector weakened. Manuel Valls spoke to the bosses of the two main operators, EDF and Areva, yesterday. As befits the industry concerned, there have been no leaks. But Libé says the message will have been quite clear - no more infighting, no more mistakes by battling big egos, sort yourselves out to limit the currect disaster at Flamanville and come up with a winning team for tomorrow. Otherwise, you'll be fed to your own reactors. That last bit is an exaggeration. Probably.

On the front page of right-wing Le Figaro French Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem gets poor marks for her proposals to reform the secondary-school curriculum. The conservative paper says the changes have been criticised by the main teachers' union, by students, by parents. Now it's the turn of the minister's Socialist colleagues to sound the alarm. Former prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is worried about the suppression of some bilingual classes. Yesterday 59 deputies, all members of the Franco-German friendship group, expressed their fears for the future of the teaching of the language of Goethe in French schools.

Le Figaro's editorial says the Socialists are slowly destroying that pillar of republican values which is the education system. There'll be no more Greek or Latin, no more good or bad marks. Instead of a system which promotes effort and excellence, we'll soon have an egalitarian morasse of mediocrity, it predicts.

There is a problem of jargon in the way French schools are administered, it comments. The right-wing paper notes that, in official parlance, students will no longer swim in pools but will "learn to move in an autonomus fashion in a standard deep aquatic environment". The editorial ends grimly. Even in the absence of swimming pools, warns Figaro, many people risk drowning in the reformed public education system.

Communist L'Humanité says big businesses have ripped off the government by taking the six-billion-euro tax incentive supposed to boost research and simply treating the state billions like additional income.

And Le Monde reports that cash-strapped city councils are compensating for cuts in their subventions from central government by increasing local taxation. As the government attempts to save 11 billion euros over the next three years, officials in Toulouse, for example, have been forced to hike the local tax bill by 15 per cent.

The right-wing opposition says this is a further sign of the hypocrisy of the Socialists, pretending to cut costs while, in reality, passing them on to the taxpayer.