French press review 9 June 2015

French Press hails President François Hollande for leading the battle for climate change at G-7 Summit. Did Manuel Valls, who used an official jet to go see Barcelona's Champions League final, lose his sense of reality?

Le Figaro makes a rare positive statement about Francois Hollande's stewardship. According to the right-wing publication, he led the battle for climate change at the G-7 summit in Elmau coming away satisfied.

The seven leaders took their "climatic responsibilities", reports the newspaper, the final communiqué turning out to be less timid than expected – the resistances of Canada and Japan now looking like a thing of the past.

According to Le Figaro, the will to limit the rise of global warming to 2 degrees Celsius as well as objectives to reduce green house gases at between 40 and 70 per cent by 2050 are clearly engraved in letters in the final declaration. Le Figaro claims that pledges to see through the de-carbonization of the economy have been greeted by environmental protection groups.

It however observes that the question about the 100 billion dollar per year Green Fund starting in 2020 was not guaranteed as President Hollande would have wished. For him, this remains the basic question which will determine the success or failure of ecological transition for developing countries sought by the COP21 Paris conference from 30 November to 11 December 2015.

And the controversy over Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ use of an official jet to attend last Saturday’s Champions League final between his Catalan birth place club Barcelona and Juventus isn’t dying down. Libération says some Socialists were hurt after finding out that Valls sneaked out of the party’s Congress in Poitiers for the trip to Berlin and then also flew back to Paris to watch the Roland Garros final on Sunday using tax payers’ money.

According toLe Parisien, President François Hollande jumped to his Prime Minister’s defence. Speaking at the G-7 Summit Hollande Monday, noted that Valls had an important meeting with European football officials to discuss France’s hosting of Euro 2016.

Valls’ enemies especially from the right are not convinced, especially Les Républicains who are eager to erase their own gaffe. The party hired a private jet for 3200 euros to take the party’s leader and ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy to a rally, held 117 kilometres outside Paris.

Leftists politicians had been looking to turn the ex-President’s spent thrift ways into political ammunition against him come 2017, more so as the conservative party couldn’t simply afford such lavish spending at a time they have a colossal 69 million debt to pay.

Right-wing attack dogs are barking about the Prime Minister’s own gaffe, in a week when France’s jobless figures have risen by 641,000 during the three years of Socialist rule. Centrist leader François Bayrou didn’t miss the opportunity to denounce what he called the loss of a sense of reality by politicians in power.

La Croix also says the timing of Manuel Valls’ poor play doesn’t simply add up. The Catholic newspaper holds in a satirical note that it is quite easy in the turbulence of government life to lose contact with ordinary life. It paraphrases a cabinet minister who once hinted that it is easy to run the lights when in the car.

According to La Croix, Manuel Valls probably opted to fly to go watch his favourite team, because a big man like himself needed to avoid a few traffic lights which would have slowed him down.