French press review 9 May 2011

Money, Victor Hugo, bath plugs and fish in the French papers today, with no consensus on the front page story.

It's just 12 months since Europe rushed to give the struggling Greek economy a massive cash transfusion.

If I have correctly understood the main story in today's business daily, Les Echos, the Greeks are still in trouble.

There was talk last week that the coffers in Athens were in such bad shape, the lads were trying to get out of the euro zone. That caused a rush on the money markets, pushing the value of the euro into the floor.

With what passes for wisdom in the bizarre realm of European finances, the authorities in Brussels have decided to loan the Greeks more money, so that they can pay the interest on the money they already owe, and everything will be hunky-dorey.

The main story in Le Figaro details efforts by the American Central Intelligence Agency to analyse the computer files and other information stolen from the house in Pakistan where Osama Bin Laden was killed by US Special Forces just one week ago.

The Americans claim that the Al Qaida leader was controlling the activities of his terrorist organisation from the compound in Abbottabad where met his end.

The French education minister does not know how to count. That's according to leftist Libération.

They say the minister has been pulling the wool over the eyes of students and parents.

Libé gives examples: the minister earlier this month claimed that state expenditure per student had grown by 80 per cent since 1980. Most of that money has gone to improving the salaries of primary school teachers.

The fact remains that France is close to bottom of the class according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, with one of the worst teacher-pupil ratios in primary schools.

9,000 further jobs will be lost in the primary sector over the next school year, with the cutting of 1,500 classes.

And nearly 57,000 education jobs have been lost in government cost-cutting efforts over the past three years.

Catholic La Croix is also looking at education, through the eyes of Richard Descoings, the director of the top French Institute of Political Studies.

He says the French system, which sees one-third of each age group leave school without a qualification, another third relegated to so-called professional colleges, with just 35% passing the baccalaureat examination, can hardly be considered a success.

The real problem, according to Richard Descoings, is that very few students know why they have to go to school.

They don't see the point of learning a poem by Victor Hugo, or how to calculate how long it takes to empty a bath with two holes in it, or why French grammar matters.

And poor Richard doesn't come up with much of an answer, shooting himself in the foot by admitting that the twentieth century social ladder by which the child of a labourer could become a manager thanks to his university degree no longer works, simply because there are now so many graduates, but the number of managerial posts has remained broadly stable.

But let's not be too materalistic. Apparently, those who are better educated are happier, though that may be a chicken and egg situation, with the better educated having other reasons for being happy, and thus for being happier.

Back to Les Echos for a look at the troubled waters of the European fishing industry.

For years, the problem has been to find ways of preventing Europe's horribly efficient fleets of trawlers from simply cleaning out the oceans, leaving not a single sardine in their wake.

Quotas have been imposed, objected to and ignored, with fishermen from outside Europe profiting, since they are not subject to the same limits.

The latest idea from Brussels is the transferable quota, meaning that a captain can sell all or part of his fishing rights to the captain of another vessel.

Fewer boats will thus catch the same number of fish, which is, apparently, a big step forward.

Fishermen in Ireland, Portugal, Holland, Germany and Sweden have all said the idea stinks like a month-old mackrel.