French press review 8 May 2015

Just three papers to hand this morning as the Catholics at La Croix and the communists at L'Humanité celebrate the anniversary of the end of the World War II in Europe by not coming in to work. The three other French national dailies are in fighting form.

Libération divides its front page between French president François Hollande, who has two years remaining of his first term, and former president, Nicolas Sarkozy who has, according to Libé, two years to avoid a prison term.

Hollande, according to the left-leaning paper, is still struggling to convince voters on a wide range of fronts. The next few months are going to be crucial if he's to have any chance of getting himself reelected in 2017.

Sarkozy is a different barrel of fish entirely.

The former president is convinced that several members of the judiciary are out to get him and that this explains why he is cited as either chief suspect or important witness in a large handful of cases ranging from alleged corruption, to abuse of power and fraud.

Yesterday the Paris Appeals Court decided that evidence against Sarkozy in the form of telephone converstions between the former president and his chief legal advisor could, indeed, be presented by the prosecution.

That means that the case, frozen for the eight months it has taken the Appeals Court to reach its decision, in which Sarko is accused of offering to promote a judge in exchange for confidential information, can now continue. With the evidence Sarkozy's team were so keen to have hushed up.

Libé says Nicolas Sarkozy has never been closer to a criminal court hearing, a situation which would hardly help his campaign to regain the presidency in 2017.

The main story in right-wing newspaper Le Figaro says the chaos in the Paris hospital system is proof that the Socialist insistence on the 35-hour working week is unsustainable nonsense.

The man who runs the French capital's public hospitals, Martin Hirsch, has called for a revision of the 35-hour deal. He claims that such a revision is vital to his plans to save around 25 million euros on an annual budget of seven billion. Otherwise, he says, he'll have to let 4,000 staff go over the next five years.

Hirsch is described by Le Figaro as "a social activist with left-wing sympathies," which is probably true, even if he was a high commissioner under the Fillon government, not renowned for anything vaguely resembling a left-wing sympathy.

The point for Figaro is, of course, to underline that this man, with a long and distinguished career in the very well-paid service of the poor, says he can no longer manage a crazy system of expensive overtime and unpredictable days off.

Worse, says Le Figaro, what is true for the Paris hospitals is even more damagingly true for the French business sector in general: the 35-hour working week has lead to a terrible collapse in national efficiency and competitiveness. All the evidence points to the same conclusion, according to the conservative daily: the decline of the French economy started exactly 13 years ago, with the ratification of the law reducing the working week to 35 hours. Not everyone will agree with that analysis.

And the paper salutes Martin Hirsch for his courage in tackling a taboo which has since petrified governments of both the left and right.

Talks between Hirsch and the unions started yesterday and Le Figaro says the ambience was glacial. Two union negotiating teams left the meeting after an hour. One that stayed has called for a strike later this month.

And these are just preliminary talks. The real negotiations aren't due to start till next month. Paris may not be a good place in which to fall ill for the foreseeable future.

Le Monde examines the debate about the atmosphere in France in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris last January.

A recently published book by historian and sociologist Emmanuel Todd suggests that the demonstrations in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings were a "white" phenomenon and one which further marginalised France's Muslim population. The debate has been particularly lively and divisive on the French left

Prime Minister Manuel Valls says we have to resist such a pessimistic view. Writing in Le Monde, Valls claims that a clear recognition of the undeniable divisions in French society is an essential step on the road to republican unity. Which may be side-stepping the crucial question, since not all French people accept Valls's vision of what republican unity might mean.