French press review 25 September 2015

There's plenty of variety on this morning's French front pages, and there's even, would you believe, a few glimmers of good news  The private sector retirement budget is out of the red for the first time since 2004, there's the prospect of an end to Colombia's fifty year civil war, and people power might save the planet.

DR

The main story in centrist Le Monde reports that the private sector retirement budget is going to show a positive balance for the first time since 2004. In other words, those who are working are contributing more than those who have retired are taking out in pension payments.

Le Monde says the change for the better is mostly explained by the progressive pushing of the official retirement age from 60 to 62.

From a negative balance of 1.2 billion euros last year, the retirement budget is now expected to show an excess of 500 million euros in 2016.

Catholic daily La Croix gives pride of place to the prospect of peace in Colombia, with a main story saying that on-going negotiations between Farc guerillas and the government look like bringing the South American country's fifty-year civil war to an end.

Communist L'Humanité is in effervescent form, celebrating citizen involvement in the climate debate. This is because the Alternatiba movement arrives in Paris this weekend, hoping to organise a number of mamoth public rallies before the official work begins at the official climate conference to be held in the French capital in December.

The communist paper says only active, committed citizens can guarantee a just and lasting solution to the planet's environmental problems.

New ways of producing energy, different attitudes to consumption, and an end to the poisonous rapacity of capitalism are all we need to make the world, literally and metaphorically, a cooler place.

So much for the good news.

The front page of left-leaning Libération shows a human hand gripping a barbed-wire fence. The headline reads "Hungary: Europe's shame".

The Paris paper wonders if there aren't grounds for expelling Budapest from the European Union, arguing that Hungarian prime minister, Victor Orban has flagrantly violated the spirt of European integration by authorising police violence against refugees.

Libération describes the Hungarian leader as "cynical and unscrupulous," saying that his description of the current situation as an invasion and his resistance to multiculturalism suggest that there may no longer be a place in the European family for a Hungary ruled by the nationalist right-wing.

Right-wing Le Figaro looks at the growing crisis at the other end of the refugee trail, in the French port of Calais, where the camps housing those hoping to cross the Channel to the United Kingdom are now being run by gangs from the Middle East and the Balkans. The thugs try to intimidate those who apply for refugee status, on the basis that officially recognised political migrants have no further need of the dubious services of the people smugglers. Le Figaro says the business is proving more lucrative than even the sale of drugs.

Le Figaro's editorial is a warning against the dangers of good news. What is the problem with the French republic, wonders the right-wing paper? Despite government assurances that all is well, that the country is back on the primrose path to prosperity and happiness, people resolutely refuse to jump for joy.

Not surprising, says the conservative daily, since no one is fooled by the official version, which ranges from white lies to outright murder of the truth. The government goes on talking about a France which simply doesn't exist.

Even the good news about the retirement budget fails to take the chill off Le Figaro's grim vision of a dark future. That good news, says the right-wing paper, is simply the outcome of a sensible decision to extend the average length of the French working life by two years, a decision taken by conservative François Fillon when he was Nicolas Sarlozy's prime minister.