French press review 15 May 2012

Frank Hollande, the man who becomes the seventh French president of the fifth republic, has a busy day ahead of him.

At 10 o'clock this morning, the out-going gaffer, Nicolas Sarkozy, will hand over the key to the wine cellar of the Elysée Palace and briefly show Frank around his new home. Then the pair will have a private chat lasting about 30 minutes, during which, among other state secrets, the codes necessary to launch French nuclear weapons will change hands.

Sarkozy will ask the new man to look after a number of former presidential employees, suggesting suitable bank chairmanships and suchlike for non-political advisers who would otherwise face life on the dole. Generally the requests made by the outgoing president are accepted without question by the new man.

The new man will then make a short speech to some 380 carefully chosen invitees. Neither Ségolène Royal nor any of the couple's four children will be present.

He gets to go for a jaunt in an open-topped, ecologically certified vehicle, up the Champs-Elysées and then there's lunch with the president of the Senate and four former prime ministers. There should have been five but Michel Rocard is in Iran and is excused.

President Hollande will then pay his respects to Jules Ferry, the father of French education, and to Marie Curie, the godmother of French science, before he announces the name of the next Socialist prime minister.

And then honest Frank has a dinner date with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

The menu in Berlin promises to be hard to chew, despite the specially sharpened cutlery, with the new French leader having the chance to present in person his unflattering views on the German economic diet of bread and water for Europe (and no bread at all for the Greeks).

However, neither side will want to open the new era in Franco-German relations with a clash, so they'll probably get on like the proverbial house on fire.

And the outgoing Nicolas Sarkozy will leave all that behind him, flying south for a two-week holiday with his wife, Carla Bruni.

Whatever Sarkozy decides to do when he returns to Paris, he won't be poor.

Apart from his potential income as a lawyer, the former president will earn 12,000 euros per month as a member of the Constitutional Council. Not to mention free first-class train tickets for life and unlimited free business class flights with Air France.

The morning's other big story is Greece.

According to right-wing Le Figaro, Europe is tempted to dump the impoverished moussaka-munchers.

The political dead-end in Athens has begun to upset the world financial markets. And the Greek state coffers contain exactly two billion euros and 37 cents, not enough to pay the state wage bill at the end of the month.

Business daily Les Echos notes that European stock values lost more than two per cent yesterday. Worries about the solidity of the Spanish banking sector have pushed the cost of 10-year bonds in Madrid above six per cent.

But that's good news for Merkel's Germany, as investors fleeing Madrid pour their ready cash into bonds in Berlin.

Which will help the German chancellor when she has to argue with Frank the Frenchman about who pays the bill for tonight's dinner.