French press review 20 July 2015

Struggling French farmers, a reforming American president, Chadian former dictator Hissène Habré, migrants in serious humanitarian danger in northern France and further debate about Greece and debt are this morning's front-page topics.

The farmers are in right-wing Le Figaro (and also blocking roads in the north-western French city of Caen) because they claim they can no longer live on what they earn producing beef and pork. The farmers blame the big supermarket chains for the collapse of prices.

Le Figaro says modern production methods and a decline in demand have left the meat producers with more than the local market can absorb. Foreign competiton, with lower overall costs, is also a problem.

President François Hollande has called on the public to buy local and has asked the supermarkets to make an effort on prices. Le Figaro praises both statements but says the real problem will require a Europe-wide reform to create a level grazing field, and an effort to make farming less administratively demanding so that producers can get on with farming and do less paperwork.

US President Barack Obama is trying to reduce the number of Americans behind bars. The US prison population is currently 2.2 million, proportionately five to 10 times higher than European averages according to Le Monde, and is overwhelmingly poor and black. Both Obama's Democrats and the opposition Republicans agree that the current system is a machine to fill prisons and must be changed.

Most American prisoners are minor offenders sentenced for drug abuse, sent to jail because of a law passed under an earlier Democrat president, Bill Clinton, which sets automatic penalties for second and subsequent offences. Clinton now admits he was wrong to support the legislation. Obama hopes to be able to change it so that money and skin colour will no longer dominate US criminal justice.

Speaking of criminal justice, the trial on war crimes charges of Chad's former dictator Hissène Habré is due to open today in Dakar, Senegal. Libération gives the story prime treatment because it marks the first time an African suspect will be tried by a neighbouring African nation.

As distrust grows between the International Criminal Court, based in Holland, and many African countries which accuse the ICC of being a "white man's tribunal", this trial before an African Union court is a step in the right direction says Libé, just as last month's refusal by the South African authorities to arrest Sudan's President Omar al Bechir was going the wrong way. But the left-leaning Paris daily worries that Habré has refused to recognise the court, that his former friendly association with Paris and Washington are going to lead to recriminations, and the paper also fears that this case may remain unique for a long time to come.

The main story in Catholic daily La Croix reports that four medical charities working with refugees trapped in the northern French city of Calais are now being forced to use methods normally reserved for dealing with major humanitarian disasters. Parts of Calais, according to the paper, have been transformed into a vast slum, with insufficient access to water, basic cover and medical care for most of the estimated 3,000 people imprisoned there.

Calais has become the first operation in France for the non-governmental organisation International Solidarity, more used to dealing with earthquake victims and those on the fringes of war zones.

Communist L'Humanité asked six economists to analyse the plan imposed by Europe on Greece. The outlook is not cheerful.

Greece will waste too much of its latest loans paying interest on earlier borrowings, the deal is contradictory, even undemocratic. There will be tears.