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French weekly magazines review

Security concerns, immigration, fiscal apathy, and social upheaval are all gracing the covers of French magazines this weekend.

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The issue causing the loudest uproar is Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault’s decision to undertake a case-by-case review of the financial burden facing tax payers. Le Figaro Magazine describes the move as a distraction, from the boiling anger by the government’s fiscal racketeering.

It’s a subtle way of burying the ecological tax, according to Le Canard Enchaîné.
Marianne nurses doubts about the outcome the dialogue with the Unions called by the government to discuss the scope of the fiscal reform. It believes the exercise resembles a Spanish inn where everyone brings along his dishes and cutlery with no idea whatsoever about what’s on the menu.

For Marianne, claims that the cascade of social demands and street protests are justified by the tax over kill, job losses resulting from industrial closures and the urgency to undertake a better redistribution of EU farm subsidies. It says that 80 percent of the farm aid goes to wealthy grain producers while small farmers get the crumbs. The state, it argues, ought to not just bail out banks but also small businesses and small traders as well.

Marianne
however warns that the red caps need to be reminded that the ecological tax is good for the economy, and for France.

Amid rising discontent, left-leaning Le Nouvel Observateur wonders what options are still within President François Hollande’s reach to recoup his standing and redeem his presidency - should he reshuffle his cabinet, change his method of government, accelerate the implementation of the reforms he promised? That’s up to him says Le Nouvel Observateur, but it doubts that he is capable or willing to implement that agenda.

L’Express
publishes a city-by-city fact check of crime and insecurity in France. The analysis based on a 2012 study carried out by security services names the suburban Parisian town of Saint-Denis as suffering from endemic delinquency estimated to be two time the national average in France. Montpellier is notorious for the highest number of violent robberies per inhabitant with a six Percent increase since the start on 2013.

Cayenne, in French Guyana holds the record of the most dangerous city in the French overseas territories, according to the weekly. The Island has been destabilised by migratory pressure, drug trafficking and violence, with police saying that an estimated 500 criminal files are opened there every year.

Immigration is another topic garnering an array of commentary. That’s an opinion upheld by Le Point. It carried out an investigation into the clichés, fantasies and misperceptions about the exact number of foreigners living in France, the burden they bring on the economy and their impact on the French republican model. It notes for instance, that immigrants represent just 8.2 percent of the French population, instead of 25 percent, which is widely circulated.

Le Point
underlines that the Front National party of Marine Le Pen puts the financial burden of immigrants on public finances at 70 billion euros. The publication claims that while economists refer to the welfare magnet effect using widely contested study when foreigners generate 12 billion euros for the budget every year. The right-wing magazine admits that the findings of its investigations are certain to hurt certain political interests.

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