French press review 23 October 2015

Do migrants pose a real risk to European stability? Is Hungarian Prime Ministrer and fence builder Viktor Orban the only politician reacting to the crisis with honesty and common sense? Who will win December's regional polls here in France? And has Pope Francis lost the battle of the synod?

DR

The front page of Le Figaro warns that Europe risks being inundated by migrants.

Slovenia is the current front line, as an estimated 40,000 people have flooded across the border from Croatia in the past five days alone. That's more people per day than were arriving in Hungary at the "peak transit period" in September. The approach of winter has added a new urgency to the migrant movement, with numbers tragically boosted by the intensification of the Russian bombing campaign in Syria.

The conservative paper says the European handling of the migrant crisis has been selfish, divided, useless and reactionary.

Le Figaro thinks only Hungary's right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban has had the courage to call a migrant a migrant, while building hundreds of kilometres of barbed-wire fences in a failed effort to keep them out.

Orban has pointed out that no European nation has given its authorities a mandate to welcome unlimited numbers of refugees. The other rulers, according to Le Figaro, have been delivering bleeding-heart speeches while quiety toughening border and other controls. Even little Mother Merkel, the German chancellor, has started flying out those who do not qualify for refugee status. Two hundred thousand failed refugees are to be put on military planes by the German authorities. Their ultimate destination and fate remain unclear.

With just two months to go to polling day in the French regional elections, Le Monde attempts to summarise the results of the various opinion polls so far carried out.

It has to be said that the picture is far from clear.

There are 17 regions, seven of them with new boundaries following the recent reorganisation of French local administrations, and Le Monde can find no clear tendency in seven of them, describing the probable outcome as uncertain simply because no polls have yet been carried out.

The Socialists are favourites to win two of the remaining 10, with the right taking two more.

In the six regions remaining, two - Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the south-east and Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie in the north-west - are likely to see a second round clash between Nicolas Sarkozy's mainstream right Republicans and the far-right Front National of Marine Le Pen.

The remaining four are for the moment too close to call between the governing Socialists and Sarko's Republicans.

Voting in the first round of those regional polls takes place on Sunday 6 December.

The main story on Le Monde's front page suggests that the political strategies of François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy have actually amplified the importance of Le Pen's far-right stance on Europe, Muslim integration, foreigners in general and migrants in particular. By invoking the "danger" of the Front National on practically every crucial topic, says Le Monde, the two mainstream leaders are paradoxically boosting Le Pen's credibility with electors.

The Pope isn't having it all his own way at the Catholic Church's gabfest on the family, currently winding down in Rome.

According to Le Monde, seven of the 13 working groups set up by Pope Francis at the start of the synod nearly three weeks ago have chosen to leave the status quo unchanged on such touchy topics as divorce, homosexuality and the unmarried couple.

Having patently failed to drag his fellow churchmen into the same century as the rest of us, Pope Francis is now trying, says Le Monde, to use the synod to change the way his very conservative church is governed.

Catholic La Croix looks to Côte d'Ivoire as presidential elections loom. On Sunday incumbent Alassane Ouattara will go looking for a second term. If he can be justly proud of what he has achieved on the economic front, says La Croix, Ouattara has less to boast about in terms of national reconciliation. Poverty, corruption and injustice continue to darken the lives of many Ivorians.

A psychiatrist interviewed by the Catholic paper says half the Ivorian population is suffering from some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder, the tragic legacy of 15 years of inter-ethnic conflict. Alassane Ouattara has done nothing to defuse that emotional time-bomb.