Euro 2016 gave France €1.2bn boost

According to figures released by the ministry of sports on Tuesday, hosting the Euro 2016 football tournament cost France less than 200 million euros ($211 million) but brought some 1.22 billion euros into the country.

There was controversy over the public funds poured into the tournament, with some 24 million euros — double the expected cost — spent on security in light of an increased terrorist threat.

The state spent a further 160 million euros on building and renovating venues for the June and July event, while private funds and tournament organiser UEFA covered the remaining costs.

But Euro 2016 brought 1.221 billion euros into the country both in tourism and spending directly related to the organisation of the tournament, according to data compiled by the Centre of the Law and Economics of Sport at Limoges University (CDES) and the consultancy firm Keneo.

In calculating the figures, researchers took into account the loss from potential tourists who would have stayed away from France to avoid the tournament, as well as the state funds which could have been used elsewhere had they not been set aside for venues.

The average tournament visitor spent 154 euros a day, with most of that going on accommodation and eating out, the study said, with tourism providing a 625.8 million euro boost to the country.

UEFA spent some 360 million euros on organising the tournament in the country, while 24 participating teams gave the economy a 34.9 million euro boost.

Accredited persons for the event spent 34.8 million euros while in the country, and sponsors 22.6 million euros, according to the figures.

Last January the CDES predicted Euro 2017 would bring in 1.266 billion euros in additional expenditure, or 0.1 percent of France’s GDP.

India signs $9 billion deal to buy French fighter jets

India has signed a deal to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from France for around $8.7bn, the country’s first major acquisition of combat planes in two decades and a boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to rebuild an ageing fleet.

The first ready-to-fly Rafales are expected to arrive by 2019 and India is set to have all 36 within six years.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian signed the agreement with his Indian counterpart, Manohar Parrikar, in New Delhi, on Friday, ending almost 18 months of wrangling over terms between New Delhi and manufacturer Dassault Aviation.

Parrikar said the deal would “significantly improve India’s strike and defence capabilities”.

Air force officials have warned for years of a major capability gap opening up with China and Pakistan without new state-of-the-art planes, as India’s outdated and largely Russian-made fleet retires and production of a locally made plane was delayed.

India had originally awarded Dassault with an order for 126 Rafales in 2012 after the twin-engine fourth-generation fighter beat rivals in a decade-long selection process, but subsequent talks collapsed.

Modi, who has vowed to modernise India’s armed forces with a $150bn spending spree, personally intervened in April 2015 to agree on the smaller order of 36 and give the air force a near-term boost as he weighed options for a more fundamental overhaul.

But an industry expert says the deal does not stand to benefit India.

“I don’t think it’s a good deal,” Bharat Karnad, a research professor in national security studies at the Centre for Policy Reseach, told Al Jazeera.

“The original deal was for 126 aircrafts for a sum of $12-15bn. If you look at 36 being bought for $9bn without any transfer of technology, it ends up being a solution to ensure the health of the aviation sector in France.

“The aircrafts are far too few to have a great operation significance in war.”

Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said there was a lot of lobbying that took place behind the scenes to make this deal happen.

“It’s a big deal indeed for France and is expected to create up to 5,000 jobs here,” she said.

“The 36 planes will be built here before being sent to India ready for service. At many stages, it looked as if it wasn’t going to be signed but the French government and President Francois Hollande have been very instrumental and lobbied hard over the years.”

‘Mark of recognition’

Friday’s agreement is a major vote of confidence in the Rafale, which had long struggled to find buyers overseas, despite heavy lobbying efforts by the administration of President Hollande.

Hollande hailed the deal as recognition of France’s aviation industry.

“The agreement … is a mark of the recognition by a major military power of the operational performance, the technical quality and the competitiveness of the French aviation industry,” Hollande said in a statement.

India says its locally made Tejas fighter, which took to the skies in July 33 years after it was cleared for development, will form a major part of its future fleet, but Parrikar has also said that India needed 100 new light combat aircraft by 2020 to replace Russian MiG-21s.

India is the world’s biggest arms importer, and despite Modi’s pledge to build a local manufacturing base, foreign defence firms view India as one of the most lucrative markets as Western states trim defence budgets.

Tensions have flared up between Pakistan and India following the Uri attack last week that killed 17 soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, at his UN General Assembly address on Wednesday, said he did not want an “arms race with India”. But Eenam Gambhir, India’s UN diplomat called the neighbours “a terrorist state”, blaming the neighbouring country of planning the attack in Uri.

French PM: Naked breasts more representative of France than headscarf

The French prime minister has stoked the fierce debate over the burkini by saying that naked breasts are more representative of the country than a headscarf.

Manuel Valls, who has supported mayors who have banned the burkini on French beaches, gave last night a speech in which he celebrated the bare breasts of Marianne, a national symbol of the Republic.

A historian has suggested Valls may have confused Marianne with the subject of this painting (Picture: Alamy)

To rapturous applause from those in attendance at the government rally, Valls said: ‘Marianne has a naked breast because she is feeding the people!

‘She is not veiled, because she is free! That is the republic!’

Valls’s suggestion that bare breasts represented France more closely than the Muslim headscarf was seized upon by critics, who accused him of historical illiteracy.

Mathilde Larrere, a historian of the French revolution, called Valls a ‘cretin’ in a string of tweets in which she also wrote that the sole reason Marianne was female was because the decadent French king was male, and that the use of an exposed breast was ‘just an artistic code’.

‘Marianne has a naked breast because it’s an allegory,’ she tweeted.

The historian Nicolas Lebourg called Valls’s interpretation of Marianne ‘inexact and stunning’, and suggested in an interview with Libération he had confused her with the subject of Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 painting, Liberty Leading the People.

He also described how there have long been two competing representations of Marianne.

One is wise, fully clothed and unarmed and one carries a sword, has an exposed breast and wears a Phrygian bonnet.

The Economist Writes on Why the French keep trying to ban Islamic body wear

A mainstream British retailer sells a fashion version of them on the high street. But the “burkini”, a body-covering swimsuit (named with the portmanteau of “burqa” and “bikini”), has been banned this summer by the mayor of Cannes from his stretch of Mediterranean beach, as well as by a dozen other mayors of French seaside towns. In countries with a tradition of liberal multiculturalism, such a ban is greeted by incomprehension, if not ridicule. Within France, however, it enjoys widespread political backing, not just from the far-right National Front but also from the mainstream right and left. Manuel Valls, the Socialist prime minister, has argued that the burkini is “not a fashion item”, but represents the “enslavement of women”. Why are the French so offended by Islamic body covering?

The government’s defence of the burkini ban rests on worries about religious tension and public order after recent terrorist attacks, coupled with two underlying principles. The first is laïcité, a strict form of secularism enshrined by law in 1905 after a struggle against authoritarian Catholicism. This principle is supposed to keep religion out of public life, and has been the basis of previous French bans: on the headscarf (and other “conspicuous” religious symbols, including the Jewish kippah and oversized crucifixes) in state schools (in 2004), and the face-covering niqab in all public places (in 2010). The other principle is women’s equality. It may appear bizarre, or frivolous, to argue that women should bare more flesh. But many on the French left in particular regard the need to protect women from a male-imposed doctrine as being at stake—and are willing to put it even before liberty, another founding value of republican France. The logic of the burkini, says Laurence Rossignol, the Socialist women’s minister, is to “hide women’s bodies in order better to control them.”

Over the years, such efforts have long been met with dismay, if not derision, outside France. When the French began to debate a ban on the burqa in 2009, for instance, Barack Obama declared in Cairo that Western countries should avoid “dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear” under “the pretence of liberalism”. Some civil-liberties groups within France have tried—but so far failed—to get the burkini ban overturned in the courts. Yet French governments bristle at the notion that their various attempts to defend laïcité amount to intolerance or an infringement of the freedom of expression. They may note that in 2014 the European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s burqa ban. What outsiders fail to understand, the French argue, is that such body wear is not just a casual choice but part of an attempt by political Islamism to win recruits and test the resilience of the French republic. Mr Valls dismisses as naive those who see it as being no different than a wetsuit. The burkini, he says, is part of a “political project”, and complacency plays into the hands of Islamists.

The difficulty is that, after a series of deadly terrorist attacks over the past 18 months, France is in a state of heightened tension. Perceived provocations on both sides are amplified. It is not just civil-liberty activists who consider the mayors’ ban excessive, or stigmatising. Some French scholars of Islam, such as Olivier Roy, consider it “absurd” to conflate the burkini with hard-line Islamism, not least because the latter would not permit women to bathe publicly in the first place. Politicians, though, are unlikely to cede ground. The nature of French identity is likely to feature prominently in next year’s presidential election. Some contenders, such as Nicolas Sarkozy, a centre-right former president, argue that the Muslim veil should be banned on the campuses of state universities. France looks set to defend, if not tighten, its strict approach to head-covering.

Muslim Frenchwoman 'fined for veil on Cannes beach'

A Muslim Frenchwoman says she was fined and faced racial abuse for wearing a hair-covering veil on a Cannes beach.

The woman, a Toulouse native named only as Siam, was strolling on the beach while on holiday with her two children.

She said she was told by three police officers that her clothing was "not correct". Meanwhile, she says, a crowd gathered, some shouting: "Go home!"

The Cannes mayor earlier this month banned full-body swimsuits known as "burkinis" from the beach.

David Lisnard said they were a "symbol of Islamic extremism" and might spark scuffles, as France is the target of Islamist attacks.

The working of his ruling suggests it could be applied to any "beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation".

In this case, Siam, 34, says she was wearing not a burkini but a hijab covering only her hair, along with leggings and a tunic.

"I wasn't intending on bathing, just dipping my feet in the water," Siam told L'Obs news website (in French).

Approached by the police officers, Siam says they asked her whether she was aware of the order in force in Cannes, and she said she had not followed it closely.

She says she was then told that beach users had to wear "proper dress". The officers suggested she could remain on the beach if she rearranged her scarf as a headband around the head.

She refused, and was fined €11 (£9.45; $12.45) - a fine which, reports suggest, she will contest.

Siam says that by this point a crowd had gathered, and although some defended her, others began applauding the police, telling her to "go home" and saying "Here, we are Catholic!"

This account was confirmed by a journalist who also came across the scene.

"Racist speech was completely unleashed," Siam said. "I was stunned."

"Because of people who have nothing to do with my religion have killed, I no longer have the right to go to the beach!"

Siam said she thought hard before going public about the incident, which happened on 16 August, but "could not let it go in our country".

"Today we are forbidden from the beach. Tomorrow, the street?"

Approached for comment by AFP news agency, Mayor Lisnard insisted women wearing a "simple veil" should not be booked by police, but said he had no reason to believe the fine had been imposed improperly.

"If this woman believes she has been unjustly booked, which unfortunately can still happen, she must contest it," he said.

(BBC)