French press review 25 February 2016

Today, the French press is all about a possible split in the ruling Socialist party. La Croix also reports from Teheran and L'Humanité has the heartwarming portrait of a Georgian student who might be deported.

DR

Left-wing Libération is talking... about the left this morning."The breaking point" reads Libé's headline.

The newspaper devotes four pages to what it calls a "split" between Prime Minister Manuel Valls, the leader of the "liberal-left", and Lille Mayor Martine Aubry, the defender of social democracy. This follows a call from Martine Aubry and other figures of the left, published yesterday in Le Monde, where she heavily criticised the government's policies.

The breaking point Libé is talking about is the proposed Labour code reform, that many, on the left, deem too Liberal.

Here's an extract of Aubry's call: "Enough is enough! It's not just the failure of the last five-year, but a lasting weakening of France, and of the left, that is being prepared, if we don't stop our fall".

Libération thinks that the Socialist Party is now too divided to recover before the 2017 elections.

An editorial calls for dialogue between the different political factions of the socialist party. "Will that be difficult and complicated? Sure. Political suicide is indeed much simpler" it says.

Le Figaro also headlines on the state of the Socialist Party and unsurprinsingly the right-wing paper goes all out against Martine Aubry, even managing to defend President François Hollande in the process.

"How dare Martine Aubry give economic lessons to Hollande" asks an editorial.

What's so wrong with her views? Well she is the one who implemented the 35 hours work week in 1997 - something that Le Figaro says caused "millions to loose their jobs".

The editorial hopes Hollande will manage to get votes for his reform, even if that means fighting against what the paper calls the "old left".And the right should help him with that, it concludes.

Catholic daily La Croix reports from Iran this morning.

The country will go to the polls tomorrow for parliamentary elections.

La Croix reports from Teheran, the Iranian capital, where it mainly talked to young people. Most of them, according to the paper, aren't interested by politics but are "waiting for the effects of the end of the economic sanctions".

Iranians, explains the paper, are more interested by the economy and the creation of new jobs.

Because the elections, and the candidates, are so tightly controlled, the government isn't expecting a huge turnout explains La Croix.

The paper describes a country that, despites the clichés we have about it, is quickly changing and evolving. There is, for example, those new coffee shops popping up around Teheran, where the youth like to meet to talk about trips abroad.

"The local youth is less political than the previous generation" says La Croix. "They're more interested in social networks and the promise of a more interesting virtual life.

Communist daily L'Humanité writes about a young student called Mariam who is currently studying at top-school Sciences Po in Paris.

Just like hundreds of other people, she attends to classes and likes to hang out with her friends when she's not studying. The only difference, explains L'Huma, is that Mariam is from Georgia and that her visa experied last year.

A court will decide to deport her or not later today.

Mariam arrived in France in 2011 after being forced to leave her country."I hope my story will shed light on the plight of foreign students" she says.