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French press review 3 June 2014

A departing king and an incoming legal reform share the front-page honours in France this morning.

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The man on the way out is Spain's Juan Carlos; the law on the way in is Christiane Taubira's attempt to reorientate the way France deals with crime.

Right-wing Le Figaro gives the honours to the royal house of Bourbon, soon to be under new management following the abdication of the 76-year-old king, in favour of his son, who will become King Felipe VI.

Catholic La Croix looks at the legal reform, which will be debated in the French parliament starting today, as a risky undertaking for an unpopular, internally divided government, further constrained by a conservative conviction that we are all threatened by hordes of repeat-offending criminals and returning holy warriors.

Left-leaning Libération manages to put the two stories together - and underline the paper's disappointment with the proposed legal changes - with a headline which reads "Juan Carlos abdicates . . . and so does France’s justice minister."

The departing king is seen as making an exemplary gesture, handing over power before he's forced, by either ill-health or ill-will, to do so.

The new man will have a lot on his plate, with a fragile economy sharpening the lines of regional division in a country in crisis. He's a lawyer and a trained economist, said to be without humour or charisma but very well trained for the job. His father was installed by the fascist leader Francisco Franco with a mandate to keep things moving briskly along to the far right. Juan Carlos had the courage and intelligence to tell his mentor what he thought of that as a game of marbles and Spain embarked on the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Felipe faces a different sort of challenge and will rule in a different environment. He will have to face the demands of Catalan and Basque separatists for a change to the Spanish constitution, if not to the national boundaries. And he will have to prove to an impoverished nation that Spain still needs a king.

The legal story here in France is a complicated one and likely to become more so once the parliamentary debate gets going.

Basically, Taubira has for two years tried to represent a Socialist administration that believes the succession of previous right-wing governments unreasonably boosted the French prison population with amendments to a criminal code which tended to deprive judges of a necessary discretion in the matter of sentencing.

Catholic La Croix believes the reform is still principally aimed at keeping the perpetrators of minor offences out of jail but warns that it will cost more to implement than France can currently afford.

Libé says the final text to be debated is too timid and will divide the parliamentary body, not just along party lines but within the ruling Socialist Party as well.

We can expect to hear more about Taubira and penal reform over the coming days, weeks, years

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