French press review 18 October 2012

There's good news and there's bad news on this morning's front pages.

The good news is that the worst of the euro crisis is over. That's according to French president, François Hollande, speaking on the front page of Le Monde.

The bad news is that the success of today's European summit in Brussels is compromised by divergences between the same Frank Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. That's on the front page of Le Figaro.

The distance separating Berlin and Paris is certainly great. Merkel will be happy that the French have finally ratified the fiscal pact, obliging member states to keep their borrowing below three per cent of GNP.

But she wants to push even further, demanding the installation of a sort of super-commissioner whose job it would be to swoop down and veto national budgets at the first sign of financial flatulence. France was against the idea when Nicolas Sarkozy was at the helm. You can bet the Socialists like the German scheme as much as they like tax breaks for the rich.

The difference in points of view on the proposed banking union are significant: Hollande sees it as an expression of solidarity, a way to support struggling banks; Merkel, who has an election on the near horizon, sees it as a question of control. She needs to get a sure grip on those banks before German voters have to start paying the debts of Spanish and Greek wastrels.

Le Figaro sees France and Germany engaged in a chicken-and-egg dispute, with each side trying to avoid being laid by the other. Brussels is going to be a barrel of laughs.

Libération gives its main story to the European summit, with a headline suggesting that the ills of the crisis are cured, but that the remedy has killed the patient. The Greeks are on strike, the Portuguese are revolting and the Spanish are at the end of their collective tether.

It's hard to see where the two Europes will find common ground in the Brussels talks.

Business daily Les Echos gives pride of place to French Economy Minister Pierre Moscovici and his call to the nation's bosses to stop whingeing about crisis and catastrophe. Let the government get on with the essential work of reform, you will not be disappointed, is the minister's message to the movers and shakers.

Jean-François Copé, the man who hopes to lead the opposition UMP, is not about to stop whingeing. In Le Monde, the right-wing's would-be leader fulminates against the incompetence of the current government, accusing President Hollande of "sabotaging French industry".

Copé is currently trailing former prime minister François Fillon in most opinion polls on the UMP leadership race. His message to the party faithful is the touchingly desperate "don't trust opinion polls" and don't read articles that call me a loser. Sorry, Frank, but you sound like a loser.

Le Figaro publishes the results of a global survey of religious discrimination carried out by the Christian charity "Help the Church". Seventy-five per cent of cases of restriction of religious freedom involve Christians, with China and the Muslim world the worst offenders.

Whatever you think about the fate of French industry, French brewing may be saved from the proposed 150 per cent tax increase to help finance the social security budget. MPs, mostly from the opposition but with a few Socialist rebels, have launched a "Hands Off My Beer" campaign, with a view to blocking the increase.

I'll drink to that.