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French weekly magazines review 12 July 2015

All this week's magazines sift through the dust of the Greek referendum, as we wait for a Brussels' verdict on the latest proposals from Athens. It's either the end of civilisation as we know it or not particularly important, depending on which publication you dip into.

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This week's magazines go to town on the analysis of last Sunday's Greek referendum. Having missed the event itself, the weeklies are now forced to look back in anger (or anguish), as they once again get ready to miss the real news, Europe's final verdict on the Greek compromise proposals.

Le Nouvel Observateur pleads for a place in Europe for the Greeks, however penniless they may continue to be.

The magazine interviews Romano Prodi, one of the fathers of the single currency and a sharp critic of the so-called "stability mechanism".

Prodi says the current dilemma is a political one. Europe needs a strong central government to keep the national administrations in line. Otherwise the equivalent of the Greek crisis will go on reproducing itself. Perhaps even worse, warns Prodi, the various extremist movements like the French Front National, Nigel Farage's Ukip and the Grillo-Salvani comedy duo in Italy will continue to make electoral inroads.

The main story in L'Express also offers to explain how Europe can be saved. You didn't know that the Old Continent was, like its new money, under threat? Well, it is indeed, and the danger is that posed by the various rabid nationalisms promoted by the aforementioned Marine Le Pen, Beppe Grillo and Nigel Farage.

According to L'Express, the Greek referendum was an expression of the very contradictions at the heart of Europe's other nationalisms. The implications menace the very heart of the European project.

L'Express talks to French former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, a man so conservative as to make Margaret Thatcher look frivolous.

Giscard is not given to doubt or nuance. The Greeks should be kicked out. They voted five months ago for a government which promised to break the rules laid down in the Maastricht Treaty; they confirmed that decision with last Sunday's "no"; they don't deserve to remain in the club. This from the man who worked very hard to get the Greece of Constantin Caramanlis admitted to the European Union in the first place.

And Giscard is sure that the predictions of catastrophe, either political or monetary, in the wake of a Greek departure are all pure fiction. He is confident that the eurozone's 200 million inhabitants won't even notice that the Greeks, with their puny, misfiring economy, have slipped over the edge.

Giscard says they can come back once they've learned to behave themselves.

The magazines Marianne and Le Point are clearly looking down opposite ends of the telescope.

Marianne publishes front-page pictures of Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean-Claude Junker, Christine Lagarde and others described by the weekly as the "dogmatic proponents of European market liberalism". They are the real extremists, screams the headline to an article arguing that democracies work on popular enthusiasm, not on a contempt for the ignorant voter. Those who refuse to listen to the Greek message are contributing to the destruction of Europe.

Nonsense, trumpets Le Point. The real charlatans are Alexis Tsipras, Spain's Pablo Iglesias, our own Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen, the proponents of a populist pipe-dream in which everything will be better once the rich have been taxed into exile and Europe reduced to a viper's nest of selfish conflict.

Tsipras has managed to cast his country in the role of victim, says Le Point, when the truth is that Athens is on the ropes because of decades of dishonesty and graft by a succession of governments. And French President François Hollande has rushed to the aid of the latest avatar of this economic scourge. The forces of social-nationalism are on the march, warns Le Point, and a Greek victory will be a defeat for Europe.

On inside pages, L'Express reports from South Sudan, describing the world's youngest nation as "still-born".

The fourth anniversary of independence from Sudan on Thursday, 9 July, passed under the clouds of a barbarous civil war and a burgeoning humanitarian disaster. And it was all so predictable, says L'Express, which sees Khartoum's determination to avenge the humiliation of separation (and the loss of the southern oil fields) in Sudan's support for rebel militia allied to the former South Sudanese vice-president, Riek Machar.

What is needed, says L'Express, is a strong military leader, capable of sorting out local ethnic rivalries and, at the same time, able to put Khartoum in its place. There aren't many candidates for the job.

Looking forward to next Wednesday's stage of the Tour de France cycle race, 188 kilometres between the southern towns of Pau and Cauterets, Le Nouvel Observateur examines individual performances on the murderous climb to the Col de Tourmalet, with the high point 2,115 metres above sea-level. The average modern competitor will cruise up this crucifying 17-kilometre climb faster than most people could manage on a motor-scooter.

Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani generated the superhuman energy of 450 watts on the climb, when anything above 410 watts is considered suspect. The suspicions have since been confirmed in both cases. But practically every top rider who has finished the stage since 1995 has been in the energy zone considered "miraculous" by sports medicine.

Bikes are lighter and more efficient, the riders better trained. But the fact that the average speed of the winner of the Tour de France has gone from the sedate 26 kilometres per hour back in 1903 to last year's 41 kilometres per hour raises a few tough questions.

Le Figaro Magazine looks at what it calls the Uber economy. From taxis and hotel rooms to banking and even medical consultants, there are now companies offering services by computer and smart phone. They collaborate directly and cheaply with the consumer and are likely to overturn the traditional economy.

This, says Le Figaro Magazine, may be a good thing for the paying customer but it will be hard to regulate and even harder to tax. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing probably won't approve.

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