Things are starting to get interesting in France, at least from my point of view: at last it is official – Nicolas Sarkozy has made it clear he wants to be president of the eurogroup for a minimum of another year. Add to that he is de facto president of the Mediterranean Union and France itself and you have the makings of something interesting  - the coming out of a megalomaniac. And we, and history, are only really interested in megalomaniacs.

As we all know a crisis makes or breaks a potential leader – it made Churchill and De Gaulle, it sank Neville Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud (I put the first names of those who sank because, well, they sank and most of us don’t know who they were). The current financial débacle is making Sarkozy. Those with long memories may remember Sunday three weeks ago when Gordon Brown came to France to “rescue” the eurogroup by explaining “his” plan for helping the crumbling banks and avoiding total meltdown (actually it was a plan used by the Swedes in similar (but purely national) circumstances in the 1990’s). M. Sarkozy listened to what the British leader had to say and adopted his plan hook, line and sinker – but not the © sign. He called it “my plan” (or “France’s plan” which now comes to the same thing). Ever since, rushing round the globe between Washington, Paris and Beijing, he has assumed the mantle of saviour of the world (pedants may carp that the plan has not really proved itself yet and may not fully work in the long term, but reality never bothers those who dream with vaulting ambition). I read in the British press that Gordon Brown is now lionised in Britain – but I would suggest that elsewhere in the world he does not register. The Americans talk of Sarkozy as the man of the moment, not Brown.

The reason is classic and simple: Sarkozy struts the stage telling everyone he is the man, Brown shuffles about grinning sheepishly.

Thus, unnoticed by others, he has re-made (not is re-making) the presidency of Europe in his own image. No longer the somewhat benign, gentlemanly almost honorific position relinquished after 6 months, he is already incarnating the powerful, me-above-nations role of President of Europe as imagined first by the European Constitution and then by the Lisbon Treaty. While the others dither, he has crowned himself. Now, with that self-made crown on his head he shuttles between Washington and Beijing organising “his idea”, a world summit to create a “new capitalism”. If the 21 leading countries of the world meet in Washington on November 15th it will because of Nicolas Sarkozy. On that day Sarkozy, the spot-light of the world upon him, will unveil his vision of how the financial world will run and be run for the next 70 or 80 years.

But Sarkozy moves continually. In the same breath as he says that all nations must fight the financial and economic crisis together, that no country, like shameful Ireland, must act purely for itself, he announces deeply patriotic measures to finance French industry. Not, as he says, “canards boiteux” (wonderful translation of Thatcher’s lame ducks), but he will finance the big successful ones which, in this time of crisis, risk being taken over by foreigners (you know, those people we are supposed to be working alongside to resolve the crisis?). He aims to prevent any foreign take-overs of Renault, Citroën, French banks or indeed anything French, and his financial support inevitably comes with strings: the French State will have “vocation à entrer directement au capital d’entreprises privées et à leur dicter leur stratégie”. The State will dictate how private businesses do their business.

Since at the same time he is advocating his own “entirely new form of capitalism” we have to assume that it has protectionism and national self-interest at its core.

Having announced measures deeply patriotic, he then announces that since two non-euro countries are taking the presidency of Europe in 2009, he had better stay on as president of the 15-member eurogroup at least until 2010. After all, we cannot have non-euro countries telling euro countries what to do, nor speaking for them. Thus when the November 15th summit announces that, to organise this new Bretton-Woods, meetings will continue well into next year, M. Sarkozy will undoubtedly insist he remain as chairman or whatever. Even though he will no longer represent Europe he’s not going to allow someone else run the summit he has created! The next two rotating presidents of the European Council, Czech then Swedish, will find themselves shackled whether they like it or not to M. Sarkozy who, constantly interfering in everyone else’s job, will not be an easy partner. As president of the eurogroup he will have no formal or legal status, but you should not imagine that will bother nor restrain in any way M. Sarkozy.

All this plays very well at home. This, after all, is why many French people voted for Sarkozy, because they believed that he could put France back in the driving seat of Europe and the co-pilot’s seat of the world. And if you read the American press, (or at least the American press as reported by the French press) that is where France now is. I suspect that many French people will ungrudgingly tolerate a few years of recession if this is accompanied by France being recognised back in her rightful place. For the same reason Sarkozy has completely given up on domestic matters (purchasing power, unemployment - all those mundane matters which never really interested him.

The person it infuriates is Angela Merkel. Partly this is personal, partly because she is genuinely annoyed that France is still stuck in the rut of its 200 year old stereotype while Germany has left its stereotype way behind. At the same time the German view of the State’s role (being a referee) is entirely at odds with the Gaullian (getting into the thick of the game, kicking, biting and head-butting with the rest). Her anger is personal because between her election in 2005 and Sarkozy’s two years later she was quite rightly considered the best voice in Europe – Chirac and Blair both reaching the end of their respective reigns. Then Sarkozy came along and on his first day in office rushed to Berlin, flinging his arms around her on the airport tarmac with a mad kiss to show everyone how important she was – for ever since he has invidiously side-lined her. She has vetoed several of his initiatives to the point where she knows that if she vetoes this one, or even expresses her disapproval, she will start to be seen as an old harridan who always says No. Sarkozy knows that he has her – if Germany wants to keep her symbolic place as co-driver of Europe she has to go along with Sarkozy and put Sarkozy at the top, so he can tell her what to do – an invidious position. The stuff of Shakespeare’s History plays. That’s why it is interesting.

But none of it seems to reach the British reader. By the time the British press wakes up, Sarkozy will be where only driving ambition can take you.

The current treatment of Gordon Brown by the French press is amusing: they cannot understand how a man they call “liberal”, who in the past, they tell us breathlessly, has publicly congratulated bankers for their performance, can have somehow dreamt up the idea of state intervention in banking. And not only has he applied this Soviet-inspired notion in the home of capitalist greed, he is actually trotting round the globe proselytising, teaching overt Marxism, if you will, to others.

The French press, and presumably many of their readers, seems to believe that any person of substance is, almost by definition, strapped into an ideology. According to this view of humanity nobody, if they’re true to themselves, can change their fundamental beliefs. Brown is a “capitalist” worse, a “free-marketeer” and thus “cannot” advocate state intervention in banking. In fact there’s nothing intrinsically French about this very unobservant view of human nature. How many BBC script conferences have I sat through where producers would lecture us that a character acting out of character was the worst script-writing sin. Mr. Nice Guy could never, for example, raise his hand against his wife (unless the audience knew that she deserved it). “Constancy of character” was all.
If there’s one thing the French think they know about the English (which of course Mr. Brown is not) it is that we are pragmatic. Faced with pouring rain and armed only with a shapeless 20-year old anorak, the Englishman will nevertheless put it on and go out (assuming he has to, if the weeding needs doing, for example, or the roses dead-heading). The Frenchman in similar circumstances will refuse to be seen even in the rain wearing such a ghastly garment – the ideology of chic will cut in – and he will stay indoors.

Faced with a banking crisis as huge as the present one, the French President came up with the solution of solidarity. Solidarité is a wonderful French ideal on which much of the Republic is based. In this case all European nations would have been asked to chip into a communal pot and the proceeds would have been shared out as necessary. The Germans, never the fools, remembered that they (and later the British) were stung by the same line back in the middle of the last century with the Common Agricultural Policy. Everyone (that means the Germans and later the British) chips in and the needy (that means the French farmers) take out. This time Angela Merkel refused to foot the bill for others’ mistakes and the Elysée hastily back-tracked and denied there had ever been such an idea!

But the French press’ astonishment that the Prince of Capitalism (Gordon Brown??) could have dreamt up the idea of state intervention in banks shows that not only do they not understand Brown’s roots, not only do they see politicians as characters in a work of fiction they themselves are writing, but also they do not really understand capitalism at all (well, anyone reading the French Press regularly would know that anyway). The principal point of capitalism is that it is pragmatic – you act according to the way you sense the wind is blowing, that is you can change your mind in mid-phone-call if necessary. You act according to your own judgement and if you’re a successful capitalist you never act the way everyone else is acting. Indeed the most successful capitalist draws out of his or her hat an idea that nobody had even thought of – as Gordon Brown did.

By choosing solidarity as the way out of the crisis, Sarkozy acted like a Frenchman – ideals to the fore, Europe pulling as one and all that. By choosing a complete about-face and grabbing the only solution that would work, Brown acted like an Englishman (which of course he isn’t).

So far French banks have not been as badly hit as some in the UK, Germany, Belgium and Spain, but there are other signs of very stormy weather ahead. French banks are said to be sheltered from the banking crisis because, it is said, the French are a nation of savers, not borrowers. This is a re-assuring argument, but it somewhat naively suggests that all banks do is care for the current and savings accounts of Monsieur and Madame average. It’s always surprising to find that your placid and entirely dull High Street bank is wheeling and dealing with billions, buying and selling on the markets with the sharper crowd. And that is where the risk is today – it’s irrelevant that France is a nation of small-savers, what’s important is that French banks have been as aggressive as French electricity and water companies in seeking to maximise their profits abroad – and in doing so have inevitably taken risks.

But for the moment that part of the crisis is in the future. What is in France now and causing great upset is unemployment. Unemployment is a curse that has plagued France in particular for too many decades. Many say that it is not a temporary, superficial blight but a deeper structural problem linked to the high employers’ charges which France needs to pay for its extremely generous (and therefore ruinously expensive) system of benefits. During 2006 and 2007 unemployment decreased from over 10% to just over 7%. Then 6 months ago that downward trend hiccoughed – and today it is announced that unemployment has rocketed up again, back to nearly 10%. A staggering reverse at this very difficult time.

A worrying sign is that the government did not see this coming. Just three weeks ago the Ministry of Finance was boasting that “unemployment is at its lowest for 25 years”. Just before the summer recess in parliament the same minister said the government’s aim was to reduce unemployment to 5% by the next election.

What makes the situation worse is that the politicians concerned, apparently unable to think of any remedy, seem simply sick of the subject. For the previous government, under Dominique de Villepin, unemployment was the number one enemy to be tracked down and destroyed at any cost (indeed at the cost of De Villepin’s political career). Presidential candidate Sarkozy repeated incessantly during his 2007 campaign that his priority was to get people back to work – indeed many outside France hoped that what he meant was structural reform to make French businesses more competitive. But once in the job he allowed himself to be lulled by the gradually falling figures, unemployment became low priority – indeed the new President focussed instead on helping the employed work longer hours. Only last Friday next year’s budget discussed in the Assemblée nationale included a 5% cut in the budget for “employment and the fight against unemployment” and a 9% cut the year after. Clearly those working out the budget assumed unemployment was dropping, the maladie cured.

The only thing he has done so far for the unemployed is to announce the future fusion of the two agencies which looked after them – one tried to find them jobs while the other separately paid them benefits. A sensible move no doubt, but little more than window-dressing unless the new agency receives adequate funding to follow each unemployed person through the difficult and depressing fight to get work. Although the agency has not started yet (indeed does not even have a name) it’s budget is already less than its administrators need.

The rapid rise in unemployment does not look to be a temporary blip, with major companies like Renault announcing large lay-offs. The cost to the French system will be high at a time when its deficit is inexorably rising and its debt increasing.

One of the greatest weaknesses of the French 5th Republic’s original Constitution was that it gave too much power to the President, making Parliament a mere device for rubber-stamping his whims and dictates. This was always the battle cry of those who wanted to see greater democracy in France and who fought to reform the Constitution. Nicolas Sarkozy long ago declared he was on the side of Democracy and wanted Constitutional reform too – more power for the people (or at least the elected representatives of the people). No sooner elected President than he set up a commission headed by his old mentor Edouard Balladur to “modernise and re-balance the institutions”. The Commission delivered its report last October and in July of this year many of their recommendations became law. To much fanfare and self-congratulation the Constitution was reformed if not re-written. One of the most praised changes, bringing more debate into French foreign policy, hitherto the monopoly of the President, was Article 35: “From now on the Government must inform Parliament of its decision to send French armed forces abroad…If the intervention lasts more than 4 months that prolongation must be authorized by Parliament.”

This was seen as a huge improvement because it appeared to make the French President, as head of the armed forces, accountable to Parliament while apparently giving the députés some say in what their armed sons and daughters get up to in other countries.

Yesterday’s debates in the National Assembly and the Senate showed the reality of this much-vaunted reform. The session, the first since the summer break, began at 3.00 p.m., although the debate on the “Authorization of the prolongation of the intervention by armed forces in Afghanistan” didn’t get going until roughly half an hour later after a series of announcements and other business. The session, including the vote, ended just 2¼ hours later at 5.45 p.m. Exactly ten minutes later the debate in the Senate opened. As in the National Assembly some time was taken up with preliminaries, announcements and other business, so that the debate proper started after half past six. The session, including the vote, finished at 8.40 p.m., thus probably two hours’ debate in the upper house too. The National Assembly voted 343 to 210 in favour of a prolongation, the Senate voted 209 to 110 in favour.

So, thanks to the Constitutional reforms of July, the government now has a mandate from the democratically elected parliament to keep French armed forces in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future ( I see no time-limit on the vote). Were the national interest at stake, such a short debate might be understandable, but there is strong feeling in the country that French soldiers should not be in Afghanistan. The French people are still proud of their President’s refusal to send troops to Iraq in 2003 and still use the subsequent violence and mayhem in that country to say “Told you so” often and loudly. The feeling is firmly that aggressive intervention in other countries is an outdated concept. There is also much criticism of the American role in Afghanistan, many reports that the Afghan people do not want “an army of occupation” and belief that the war is unwinnable. Anyway, it is said, the cause has nothing to do with France.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of those arguments, a mere two hours’ debate in each section of parliament, followed not by reflection and discussion with peers or constituents but straight away with a vote, does not seem to be a very good example of greater democracy. For, despite the feeling in the country, the outcome of the vote was never in question and two hours debate was never going to change anyone’s mind. In any case so brief a debate cannot air all the issues. So it is tempting to see all this fuss about Constitutional reform, a changed France, as yet another example of President Sarkozy’s window-dressing.

France is known for many things, one of which is its many and beautiful old buildings. Almost every town has grown up around a core of twelfth, thirteenth or fourteenth century buildings – churches, cathedrals, castles, parlements, merchant’s houses. The countryside is littered with châteaux, fortified farm-houses, isolated chapels or stunning manoirs. Given that so much of its reputation is focussed on the past, it’s not only surprising that so many of these buildings are in such a bad state, but even more astonishing that they are being allowed to deteriorate so rapidly. Only a couple of years ago I wrote that it would take 7 billion euro to restore the most pressing ancient monuments in France. Today, as we approach the annual “journées du patrimoine”, when many buildings are open to the public, that figure has been revised upwards to 11 billion euro. As a comparison, the Ministry of Culture’s entire annual budget is less than 3 billion – and that covers theatre, cinema, opera, fine art, exhibitions etc etc as well as ancient monuments.

When I wrote my first piece on France’s historic buildings, 32% of all listed property were considered “défectueux”, including, I remember, Amiens cathedral which was considered unsafe (but nevertheless remains open because of the rumpus it would cause were it to close). Now that’s risen to 41%. And it’s not about to decrease: last year the monuments historiques section of the Ministry of Culture had a budget of 380 million, this current year it’s 20% less at 303 million. That’s with an active and on-going debt run up by the regional cultural departments of 600 million and, I repeat, a current bill for works needing to be done of 11 billion. The situation is, quite frankly, calamiteux.

A year ago the Minister of Culture announced she was going to claw her way out of this mess by asking for a tax on hotel bills – a way of getting foreign tourists to help pay for the sites they come to France to visit. But that seems to have disappeared, now she’s talking about a tax on betting and on-line games. In the present climate they are unlikely to get much further.

A wider problem is the French reticence towards lobbying. Indeed it’s a gros mot in political circles. So the people who could and should lobby for old buildings, such as La Demeure Historique which represents many ancient private houses, cut no ice. They are too civilised. They point out that although half of all listed buildings are privately owned, they receive less than 10% of the government’s grants. That although 65% (last figure, I promise) of all properties “en péril” are in the country, properties beyond the hallowed pale of the Ile de France get virtually nothing.

Lobbying parliament does not good, but what about lobbying those whose incomes are large enough to be a mild embarrassment to them? After all, Rheims cathedral would not still be standing were it not for the generosity of the Rockefellers. But France has few incentives for the terminally rich to give away their money. Nevertheless they are the reason these jewels of France’s 14th and 15th century history are still upright, not the centralised coffers of the Chancellor.

Another problem, it seems to me, is that such is the enormous emotive power of the 1789 Revolution in France that anything pre-dating it, particularly anything associated with religion or the ancien régime, comes loaded with a certain ambiguity. People seem to wonder whether they should be paying for buildings that encouraged superstition and unrepublican privilege – and as they waste their time wondering, the buildings fall down. They may be beautiful but they are politically incorrect.

It’s also tempting to believe that since these buildings have been here for several hundred years they’ll keep going a bit longer, but it’s probably not true. Many, like the house I sit in writing this post, were built only to deal with a specific problem – keeping out English marauders, the disbanded soldiers of Edward III, for example, then mildly modified two hundred years later to keep out the damned protestants. When I see how some of “my” walls were thrown up I can only marvel that they are still standing – for the other thing one learns is that contrary to romantic belief, rural builders way back then were no better than rural builders now. Only cathedrals were built for eternity, carefully and with great thought – but even they don’t look as if they’re going to make it.

Much debate in the press and on-line about EDVIGE, an up-date of the parameters of the files the French police may keep on certain people. It’s tempting and easy to see the spreading hand of Big Brother behind the changes, but in reality the existence of a “political police” in France pre-dates the Revolution. Given France’s turbulent history of populist and student uprisings, dictators, occupation by Nazis and bloody civil wars it is scarcely surprising that the nation’s rulers wanted to know from the inside what the opposition were up to. It’s a tradition that lives on. In July of this year the Renseignements Généraux (General Information) were merged with another branch of the surveillance police, the DST (Direction de la surveillance du territoire) , to form a new body, the DCRI (Direction central du renseignement intérieur). To mark the occasion their remit was redefined in this decree known by its acronym Edvige (Exploitation documentaire et valorisation de l’information générale) – and now (6 weeks after it was instituted) causing much upset.

Perhaps the most surprising element of the new decree is that it is not a blanket measure affecting everyone, instead it targets two apparently disparate categories of citizens: politicians, trades unionists and religious leaders are lumped together with “those susceptible of disturbing the public order”. Thus members of government and pedlars of religion are put in the same surveillance basket as teenage thugs and pedlars of dope – about time too, some might think.

The most controversial elements are that the updated decree allows files to be kept on those over the age of 16 who are likely to disturb the peace, the files may contain information on a person’s ethnic origins (regular readers of France Profonde will remember that up until now, because of Egalité, no mention may be made of a person’s ethnicity) as well as details of sexual orientation, religious/political beliefs and financial situation. Also information may be kept on a person’s “environnement” (including friends, colleagues and family) and the files will be kept forever.
As always in Big Brother scares the passionate criticisms reveal a fair amount of paranoia. A politician in Lyon cries “Why is it necessary to know the fortune of someone standing in a local election?” To me the answer seems perfectly obvious. Likewise the sensitivity about keeping details of a person’s racial origins seems misplaced – usually they are the first thing you see when you meet someone.

In a sense more pertinent criticism of the decree would be Why should the flow of information be only one-way? Why, when a gendarme stops me and, from my car’s registration, summons up information about me, should I not be able to summon up information about him? Why should I not be able to know about his sexual proclivities or drug abuse (his political opinion may be evident) if he can know about mine? Then again, why should this information be available only to people working in the police force? What is wrong with educated adults being able to assess a religious leader or a would-be member of parliament from a full picture of him or her. The worst it would do is deprive the press of their power of using or withholding privileged information, thus of being able to create scandals as and when it suits them. If we were all allowed to know that such-and-such a presidential candidate had an illegitimate daughter, or some pious minister of housing living off the state in fact had several vast properties or that trades unions regularly received substantial funding from the employers’ federation our way of seeing and forming an opinion would be enhanced – and our time would not be wasted trying to follow ultimately banal “scandals”. The absurdly complicated, long-winded and ruinously expensive Clearstream “scandal” for example would have been still-born – we would have known straight away whether or not any of the people named had transferred large amounts of money off-shore (nothing illegal about that, after all) and millions of euros of tax-payers’ money would have been saved.

Anyway, as Mediapart says, all this polémique about Edvige is somewhat spurious: at the same time as Edvige another, entirely mysterious decree was instituted – Cristina. Covered by the infamous “secret défense”, one is not even sure what the initials stand for (possibly Centralisation du renseignement intérieur pour la sécurité du territoire et les intérêts nationaux), let alone what information about us it allows certain fonctionnaires to collect, store and mull over. As yet no one seems bothered by that.

(apologies for the lack of links - my WordPress write page seems to be malfunctioning this morning)

A belated piece on what could be President Sarkozy’s most encouraging move yet – spreading RSA, the Revenu de solidarité active, right across the country (it has been in place experimentally in a third of French départements since May 2007). The name itself means little, but the idea is to replace three present forms of assistance for those who are at the bottom of the social ladder. Many of those currently on the most basic forms of social assistance (single parents and/or the unemployed who are not eligible for regular unemployment benefit) find it pays better to remain out of work on state hand-outs than to take a job, often part-time. By topping up a salary to the level of the official minimum wage, the State hopes to wean them off welfare. Thus, to take a real example, a single mother, Isabelle, working part-time for 580 euro a month would, the President promised her last week, get an extra 200 euro. Like any measure it is flawed, but it is a step in the right direction of encouraging people to work. The details haven’t yet been finalised, but it seems there will be a “two strikes and out” clause – that if you turn down two offers of (reasonable) work, you forfeit your chances of getting RSA. The unions are saying it will encourage employers to take on people at low wages knowing the State will pay the rest, which may be true but on the other hand it may be more important to get people back into work mode.

The more problematic part, it seems to me, is how Sarkozy aims to pay for this. As we all know, there is (officially) no spare cash floating about in France, the “coffers are empty”. Sarkozy says RSA will be paid for by taxing revenue from capital, including maturing life assurance policies, at 1.1%. I agree with Rick’s comment to a previous post that all sounds suspiciously vague. It means taxing income from rented property – presumably including gites through which many ex-pat Brits scrape a meagre supplement to whatever other income they have. Many rented properties are the victims of French inheritance laws, a family cannot agree whether or not to sell the parents’ house so faute de mieux they rent it out. Certainly those who make real money from renting property will be excluded from this new tax since Sarkozy dropped the top-rate limit on income tax to 50% of revenue. Also excluded for the same reason will be those who make a large income from share dividends – although all those “small investors” who were strongly encouraged to buy shares in companies being privatised will be penalized. The main payers will be the middle classes, those who carefully save some of their income. It seems hard (and ironic) that those who will pay most are the socially responsible who instead of spending everything they get try to keep some back for retirement or a rainy day.

Estimates of how many people will benefit and by how much vary wildly, nor does anyone seem to know exactly who will foot the bill, but what is certain is that Sarkozy is increasing the weight of the State and its expenses at a time when the public deficit is already far too high. With annual growth now recognised as being around 1% (not 2.5% as promised a few months ago) the national debt can only get greater, unemployment increase. Helping the poor get into work is undoubtedly an excellent and necessary move, but Sarkozy’s RSA is not one of those deep-cutting reforms to employment which he has long promised and which France still needs. Also, since this RSA is not scheduled to cut in for another year, there is also plenty of time for it to become diluted “by events outside our control” or even to slip away unnoticed.

One of the candidate Sarkozy’s favourite slogans was “travailler plus pour gagner plus” – work more to earn more. Teachers, for example, who already work long hours, are today being exhorted to work “more overtime to help pupils in difficulty”. Just recently however I’ve been hearing more and more people say they don’t want to work more. But in the same breath they say that with spiralling fuel costs and steadily rising food costs, it’s becoming impossible to make ends meet. So if they don’t want to work more, they presumably expect wages to rise at the same rate as inflation. Wages have been stagnant in France for several years now, however, and with many French companies losing their competitive edge, according to reports, that situation is not likely to change. It’s a tough one for Sarkozy – because if people really don’t want to work more, none of his employment reforms will happen. I get the feeling that the popular hunger for reform (if it really existed) has gone, spoiled perhaps by the character and methods of the man who pushed them as his principle policy.

The difference between the British and French press. While Libération this morning says that car sales in France were doing exceptionally well, the FT says car sales in France fell. “Car sales down in France” headlines the FT, whereas the French newspaper headlines with admirable chauvinism “World crisis, France reprieved”. The French article continues: “While worldwide the car industry continues its collapse, the French market manages to hold its own. New car sales rose by 2.2% in comparison with August 2007.” Against that the FT journalist reckons: “Car sales ….fell in France last month in a further sign that European consumers are putting off purchases of big-ticket goods.” The English paper then adds: “Passenger car sales in France were down by 7.1 per cent year on year last month, according to industry group CCFA, but rose slightly at 2.2 per cent when adjusted for differences in working days.” Nowhere does the French newspaper mention the figure of 7.1%. It does however explain that the 2.2 figure is adjusted to allow for “the difference in the number of working days”, presumably meaning the number of working days lost to holidays – France being closed in August. I imagine the Comité des constructeurs français d’automobiles has based its more optimistic figure on the number of cars French factories would have churned out had they not been on holiday. Mmmm.

While we’re on the conditional, another difference in the French and British press this morning is the reporting on yesterday’s EU decision on what to do about Russia. The difference is subtle, but telling nevertheless. The FT writes: “European Union leaders warned Russia on Monday that they would postpone talks on a new long-term partnership agreement unless Moscow withdrew its troops in Georgia to positions occupied before last month’s fighting.” My italics. All in the conditional tense, nothing drastic has actually happened yet. Le Monde leads its article with: “The heads of government of the EU countries decided to postpone talks to negotiate a long-term partnership agreement with Russia” giving the impression of much greater determination and unity, making the reader believe the break has already happened. Le Monde then added “as long as the withdrawal of troops has not been respected”.

On a more sombre note I haven’t seen any press report, French or British, on the Afghan children killed yesterday by NATO forces. Three children were killed by mistake in Eastern Afghanistan (part of which, but I don’t think the relevant province of Paktika, is “controlled” by the controversial French contingent), another two were killed in an early morning raid in Kabul, which as far as I can make out, is part of the French military area. ISAF has confirmed the first killing, but not the nationality of the soldiers responsible. Apparently the soldiers coming under fire ordered up artillery assistance. The first shell exploded close to a civilian compound, “the ISAF soldiers immediately called “check fire” to halt the artillery, but by that time, a second round was already fired,” explains the ISAF official communiqué. “The ISAF soldiers went to the qalat and found three dead children and seven wounded civilians.” The killing of two children in Kabul has been claimed by Afghans but not confirmed by ISAF. If it turns out that French troops were involved, it will be interesting to see how much coverage is given.

In the second quarter of this year, France’s GDP contracted by 0.3%. In other words along with her other seemingly unshakeable economic woes (public deficit, external trade, now rising unemployment, falling manufacturing output) we now have to add the risk of recession.

As politicians keep assuring us, recession is only a word. Perhaps. Yet during those heady days of the presidential election, growth was to be France’s cure-all. “Growth?” said candidate Sarkozy. “I’ll go and grab it with my teeth if I have to.” As growth slips into the negative perhaps he should look out a new set.

All the while this trouble has been slowly coming to the boil the French government has repeatedly insisted nothing is wrong, that like a well-tended garden France is growing well. A year ago almost to the day, as the effects of the subprime crisis were being felt in all the Western countries, as the Northern Rock foundered in Britain and the ECB poured an unprecedented 320 billion euro into the banking system, the French Minister of Economics, the very intelligent and experienced Christine Lagarde, told us not to worry: “we have the basis of a dynamic growth, since France’s international environment is going in the right direction” As Mediapart’s journalists say “France’s leaders gave the impression that the French economy was not connected to the rest of the world.”

There are obvious parallels with a very different situation in 1986 when the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded. As the nuclear cloud was blown westwards across Europe, even as the Germans next door were passing emergency measures prohibiting the sale of certain fresh foods, the French authorities insisted that nothing was wrong since the frontiers of France were being protected against radio-active fall-out by an anticyclone from the Azores. More than a week after the explosion the Min. of Ag. announced that “French territory has been entirely spared from nuclear fall-out”. Both these statements turned out to be tragically false and the French authorities since have been publicly castigated for misleading the public.

The fact that for the past year the French authorities have once again been telling us that nothing is wrong, even as France’s neighbours take measures to avoid the worst effects of the economic crisis, is important for two reasons. The great majority of economic statistics mean nothing to most people – there is however one that truly matters, and that is whether the hard cash they themselves earn enables them to live to a standard to which they have become accustomed. There are always enough toady experts on hand to assure us that disastrous-sounding figures are meaningless, but when voters look at the plate in front of them and wonder why there’s less on it, or have to admit to the neighbour that they can’t afford the same holiday they had last year, then politicians need to watch out.

The second reason is that for generations now the French voter has grumbled that politicians are out of touch with reality. Formed in the grandes and elitist écoles, dining in three-star restaurants, paid as civil servants win or lose an election, they have been seen (and have seen themselves) as a bande à part. Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to change all that. And indeed did, for a while, rushing about as a Minister checking out the rumbles of discontent in the boulangeries of France. That seems to be over. Now his puppet prime minister, emerging from a hastily-convened crisis meeting, tells the press there is no crisis, it will be reforms as usual and that a “plan de relance  is neither possible, desirable nor effective”. As the French public debt inevitably increases, members of the Economic and Financial Affairs Commission of the European Commission must be holding their breath to see how the French government tries to explain it away this time.

Indeed interest repayments on its annual debt have blossomed with inflation and this year the Ministry of the Economy estimates they will cost the nation around 60 billion euro - just to service the debt. That’s a little more than the entire education budget (excluding universities). For months we (and the European Commission) have been assured that France’s dynamic growth will get us out of the fix - but as quarterly growth slips into the negative that myth has been blown: in January of this year the Minister of the Economy promised an annual growth of 2.5%. Less than four months later that had slipped to between 2 and 1.7%. Now in mid-August INSEE’s estimate has fallen to 0.6%. That is a big drop in less than eight months. Still, as the government keeps telling us,nothing to get excited about, after all, since “the coffers are empty” what can they do? Gallic shrug.