To greet the memory of a "friend", the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder signs a tribune in Le Figaro paying tribute to "a Frenchman, who defended the interest of his country and Europe". At his side, he worked to strengthen the Franco-German couple and also refused to engage, in 2003, in the war in Iraq alongside the United States.
The international press emphasizes nevertheless that beyond the memory, there is the balance sheet. France honors the best of Jacques Chirac, writes the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia , saying it is "a pragmatic and jovial former president who died, but also condemned as part of a scandal". Scandal that ended with a sentence of two in prison suspended in the context of fictitious jobs of the City of Paris, an unprecedented sentence for a French president.
The China Daily salutes the lover of China and its poetry but raises its inconstancy, Eurosceptic one day before becoming ardent defender of European federalism.
Admiral, the Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias regrets "this last great French head of state" who went away. For L'Opinion, the death of Jacques Chirac is "the end of an era, a political history that turns and arouses a form of nostalgia" ...
The Spanish newspaper El Pais, finally, apprehends Jacques Chirac in "total politics in a world that no longer exists". A world in which "leaders could combine the monarchical solemnity of the Fifth Republic with empathy and a skill not to be confused with populism". What remains of Chirac, wonders El Pais ?
Evidence that the lessons of the old policy are still relevant, Emmanuel Macron enviously look at these leaders of another time who had been able to connect with their constituents ... Slate is even interested in his pants that went back over the belly button. And what if Jacques Chirac gave us, in addition, lessons of dress?