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French press review 11 December 2014

Socialists fall out over the right to shop on Sunday and nobody else seems to like the government's latest attempt to reform the French economy. And, in the wake of the much-publicised US CIA report, papers ask if torture works.

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Right-wing Le Figaro is happy to give pride of place to the latest signs of dissent within  the ranks of the ruling Socialist Party.

"Aubry leads the battle against Valls," reads the headline, Aubry being the Socialist mayor of the northern city of Lille, Valls being the prime minister and the battle roughly describing the permanent state of affairs in the ruling majority.

The so-called "Macron law" is currently being discussed by the government, with the broad aim of getting the economy moving again. There's an awful lot in the proposed legislation, 106 separate articles, enough to annoy practically everybody and very little that the government can point to as clearly and definitely positive. Most economists have condemned the proposals as insufficient to the crucial task of relaunching the French economy.

One of the many contentious suggestions is the extension of Sunday working, currently limited to four weekends per year in most sectors, with the new law offering a range between five and a dozen Sundays annually. Martine Aubry, who championed the 35-hour working week, says the move is a step backwards and that she will fight it tooth and nail.

Le Figaro notes that this is Aubry's second anti-government salvo in as many weeks, reminding us that she was virulently critical of the economic policies of the Valls government in a recent interview in a Sunday newspaper. According to the right-wing paper's editorial, Valls/Macron versus Aubry is a clash of fundamental values and it's difficult to see even the most tenuous socialist principles uniting them.

Meanwhile, President François Hollande wastes time and energy trying to keep his troops from open mutiny and civil war. A shambles, says Le Figaro, which could mercifully come to a dramatic end in January, when the contested Macron law is debated in the National Assembly.

Yesterday, rebel Socialists said they would not hesitate to vote against the majority, thus ending their strategy of abstention. That threat may force the government to use the constitutional provision known as 49-3 to force the adoption of the law without a vote, even if Valls has said he counts on the common sense of the deputies to recognise the importance of this initiative.

And all this, chortles Le Figaro, barely six months before the Socialist Party Congress.

They don't like Emmanuel Macron's proposed law at communist L'Humanité either, because the communists are proper socialists who disapprove of austerity measures, especially when those measures have proved ineffective in boosting the economy and providing jobs.

The Communist Party daily's headline describes the disputed legislation as "an acceleration of a policy which has us heading straight for the wall".

L'Humanité claims that nearly 60,000 jobs have been lost in merchandising over the past 12 months, that 80 per cent of new contracts are on a short-term basis, half of them as short as 10 days, and that industrial production is going through the floor.

L'Huma says the Macron proposals are a time bomb which will blow French labour legislation apart. And, according to the communist paper, just like the responsibility deal with the employers, Macron will have no real effect on growth or jobs.

The communists and the conservatives thus, for once, see almost eye-to-eye, with their scepticism bolstered by the statement yesterday from the State Council that Macron was full of holes and insufficiencies when it came to translating proposed measures into real economic gains.

In the wake of CIA admissions about the mistreatment of suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Catholic La Croix asks why torture remains so difficult to eradicate. The simple, short-term answer is probably, because it's effective. But is it?

La Croix says that the report by the US Senate is clear: torture did not break the will of the terrorists, did not prevent terrorist attacks, had in fact the reverse effect of strengthening the determination of the enemies of a hypocritical democracy.

We routinely condemn regimes and groups who use barbarous methods, says the Catholic daily. If we accept the same techniques, with their disregard for individual human life and dignity, then the battle against barbarity is already lost.

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