French press review 27 March 2017

In today's French papers, a warning from the man who predicted the Trump victory in the United States that Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front could win the second round of the French presidential election in May. And why Wall Street's  "fear index" shot up sharply last week.

Le Monde's web site is giving pride of place to the wave of protest which swept Russia at the weekend. Thousands of people attempted to congregate in Moscow and several other Russian cities to express their anger at corruption in high places. Seven hundred of the Moscow demonstrators were arrested, including Alexei Navalny, an opposition figure who plans to stand against Vladimir Putin in next year's presidential election.

Turkey's president plays the anti-European card

Right-wing Le Figaro gives the front-page honours to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggesting that the Turkish leader is playing with a dangerous form of nationalism in continuing to criticise Europe.

Currently campaigning in support of a referendum which, if accepted, will greatly increase the Turkish president's powers, Erdogan has again threatened a complete break with Europe. Le Figaro says his rhetoric is increasingly nationalist and anti-European.

Erdogan has repeated his determination to hold a separate referendum on Turkish membership of the European Union.

Who cares about culture in the French presidential race?

With 27 days to go to the first round of voting, left-leaning Libération is worried that culture is the forgotten topic in the French presidential campaign.

The last five years weren't great, complains Libé, and the challenge posed by the digital revolution to a sector which is crucial to the French national identity has still to be met by inventive legislation. Libération's editorial on the topic is worryingly headlined "Mumification".

Wall Street's volatility index gets the jitters

On it inside pages Le Figaro notes that Wall Street's volatility index the VIX, also known as "the fear figure", shot up by 15 percent at the end of last week. The paper says many observers are suggesting that this could be the first cold blast announcing a coming storm.

The VIX is supposed to provide an indication of how nervous investors are. It peaked at 25 percent last June in the wake of the Brexit vote.

Wall Street has been coasting on a series of record highs since the elction of Donald Trump as US president, says Le Figaro, but the defeat of Trump's attempt to overturn his predecessor's health-care legislation now has investors wondering how much change the new man at the helm can really deliver. He has promised to reduce taxes and boost growth by favouring local industry. But his Republican majority is showing signs of division on key issues.

Last week the top Wall Street index of share values, the Dow Jones, lost 1.5 percent, suggesting that American shares are going to end the month in the red for the first time in 20 weeks. The positive Trump effect may, says Le Figaro, be wearing thin.

Marine Le Pen can win the French presidential race

And Libération carries an article by the French scientist who, last summer, predicted the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential battle. This time, Serge Galam is predicting that Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front can win, not just the first round, but the whole French election. The key to the outcome is something called "differential abstention".

From a situation in which the election of Marine Le Pen was "impossible," we are now at a stage where a National Front victory is simply "improbable". Does that change much?

It is completely possible that Le Pen, currently either leading or sharing the lead with Emmanuel Macron in polls of people's voting intentions in the first round, could get marginally more than 50 percent of votes in the second, he claims.

This is because her core voters will show up in force for that second round but many others, convinced that what the French call the "Republican Front" will work against the daughter as it worked against the father in 2002, and unhappy about having to vote for someone from outside their own political family, will find reasons not to vote at all.

Abstention is going to have a larger impact on the challenger, whoever he is, than on Le Pen, Galam argues. If her people show up in bloc and the challenger loses 15 or 20 percent of support for the reasons sketched above, the leader of the anti-European, anti-immigrant National Front will get more than 50 percent and will become the next French president.

From "impossible" to "improbable" the writer concludes that a Le Pen vicory has now moved into the realm of the "very possible".

French publicly run schools can do better

Closer to home, Le Figaro says that 58 French secondary schools had a 100 percent success rate in last year's baccalauréat examination. What's interesting about the figures is the huge preponderance of private schools in the most successful group. Of the 36 Paris establishments recording a 100 percent success rate in the bac, 31 are private, five publicly run. In Lyon, Marseille or Nice, for example, no public lycée managed to get 100 percent of its final-year students through the final school exam.