Interesting developments on the ratification in France of the revised European Treaty, as reported in rue 89. Like Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy believes he can push the Treaty through Parliament without a referendum. Indeed he is to keen/desperate that it should slip through painlessly that he made the unprecedented step (for a serving president, who is supposed to above party politics) of going to the UMP headquarters as soon as he got back from Lisbon to tell the UMP députés it was their sworn duty to get the Treaty ratified before Christmas. Not only will he whip it through, he wants France to be the first to do so, thus he hopes expunging the lingering guilt of the disastrous 2005 referendum. However Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, a Socialist Euro-MP, and Paul Quilès, a former Socialist minister have come up with an intriguing loop-hole which would, they believe, force the French president to hold a referendum.

“For the Lisbon Treaty to take effect,” says Ms Lienemann, quoted in rue 89, “it has to go through two stages. First stage: modify the French Constitution (articles 88-1 to 88-7). Second stage: ratification of the text of the new treaty.”

To modify the French Constitution there has to be a 3/5ths majority in the Congress (a special sitting of both houses of the French Parliament at Versailles). If all the Socialist, Communist, Green and MoDem députés and senators voted against, the motion would fail, the Constitution could not be changed and the president would be obliged to hold a referendum. In theory this is possible since those parties combined have some 363 representatives in a total of 908.

Nicolas Sarkozy will say that the presidential election was a vote of confidence in what he touted as “his” treaty, and that is referendum enough. However, an opinion poll conducted on the 24th and 25 October by CSA found that nevertheless 61% still want a proper referendum on the Treaty, as oppose to 31% who say it’s not necessary. The same poll found that 68% (of those expressing themselves) said they would vote Yes, but that’s misleading because fully 52% of those asked said they would abstain or spoil their ballot paper.

It’s a tough one. I am sure that Europe does need its new tool kit to make it function more smoothly (not that it will, even then, but still….). On the other hand I understand those who, like the Economist this week, claim the Treaty is too important for the people to be deprived of their direct vote. Ms Lienemann’s move does nothing except politicise the Treaty, deliberately trying to undermine Sarkozy possibly for its own sake. Sarkozy’s assumption that everyone who voted for him voted in favour of every single one of his policies is disingenuous, but then so is Paul Quilès’ justification for forcing a fresh referendum: “In a democracy who could be afraid of the people?”

To mark yesterday’s hugely-hyped release of the 7th and possibly final ‘Harry Potter’, Libération has a piece by Jean-Claude Milner on what, for the French intellectual, the series is really about. Illuminating.

The first section is headed Magic versus Maggie. “It has to be said that ‘Harry Potter’ is deeply political and shows England as it is today” he begins. The last five words in that sentence will always prick up my interest: how is England today?

“Reading [the series] one has the feeling that J.K. Rowling, like many cultivated English people, knows there was a real Thatcherian revolution, a catastrophe…..but [she knows also] there is something else besides globalisation, that culture is not powerless.”

Doubtless true, though I would have thought Ms Rowling would be pretty happy with globalisation, certainly she has done quite well out of it. As to Margaret Thatcher, many French people seem mesmerized by her, to a much greater extent than the British, indeed bewitched by her, seeing her shadow lurking round every corner. For M. Milner, evidence of Ms Rowling’s dislike of the Dame de Fer is that she called the ridiculous aunt in ‘Prisoner of Azkebahn’ “Marge”, which Milner takes to be a diminutive of Margaret, whereas I would guess most English ears hear Marjorie, derived from Margaret certainly, but I don’t connect the two automatically – English culture is so confusing!

In England, Milner says, there has always been an alliance between the aristocracy (Dumbledore, Harry) and the people (Hermione) against an all-powerful middle class (Uncle Vernon, Petunia), quoting Byron, Shelley, Marx and Virginia Woolf as well as “the Cambridge Five, the pro-Soviet spies of the 1950’s” to support him. “In England there has always been a current of opinion opposed to the free market.” News indeed to Libération readers, and how relieved to know they can now buy, read and discuss ‘Harry Potter’ with a clear conscience since the series is “a war machine against the thatchéro-blairiste world and the American way of life”.

Milner goes on to say that Ms Rowling’s vision of England is born out of the “Elizabethan moment”, when renaissance Europe arrived in England. (As evidence “In Dumbledore there are two “d’s”, a reference to John Dee.”) The vital element in this Rowling/Elizabethan world perceived by Milner are the classics :

“it’s as though she were saying ‘Learn Latin and Greek instead of studying marketing. You could influence the world in unexpected ways.’ ”

A deeply hidden agenda which I admit I didn’t pick up on, although a theme touched on in this blog a couple of days ago by Marie-France.

But of key importance in Rowling’s world, according to M. Milner, is……French,

“which has a very particular place in contemporary England. Members of the Royal family must learn French, principally because it is spoken in the Channel Islands which are part of the kingdom.”

It’s sometimes amusing, sometimes appalling but always fascinating to see what the French learn and retain about Britain.

“And if the tabloids so often indulge in French bashing it’s because in England French is traditionally linked both to a feudal power system and an elitist culture. It is not an accident that Professor Dumbledore is a friend of the French alchemist Nicolas Flamel nor that French is present in ‘Harry Potter’ (Voldemort, Malfoy, Griffons d’Or). It is part of the relationship a cultivated Briton, like Rowling, has with the French language.”

Strangely Milner does not pick up that the arch-enemy throughout the series, threatening the world with his perversion of Good, has adopted a French name (with an Italian-sounding henchman/snake). Nor does he mention Fleur Delacour, who, mocked by the author as well as by the reader, is somewhat closer to the tabloid stereotype of a French drama-queen and is instinctively loathed by all Rowling’s right-minded female/feminist characters. Maybe the French edition calls her something else – I’ve often wondered how the French dub Peter Sellers’ voice in the Pink Panther series. Maybe they make him speak French with a heavy English accent.

Last week writers were saying that Sarkozy had had a bad week. Now as bad news on the domestic front fails to recede it looks more as if the president is finally facing up to reality: leaving domestic politics to his government he has been spending more energy on France’s place abroad.

At home the reforms look as if they are unravelling as fast as the government is trying to push them through, indeed there has been so much back-tracking that David Martinon, one of the president’s spokesmen, yesterday felt it necessary to redefine what reform means: apparently reforms are not something unpleasant that have to be swallowed and suffered like bitter medicine, but on the contrary a gentle process of dialogue which results in everyone serenely agreeing on how to make the machinery work better. Given the scale of reform needed in France it would be helpful to have some examples of where that has worked……

During the election campaign words like rupture and reform were bandied about as if they were somehow absolutes, but now we are told they are variable, applying to some but not others. Thus the reform of the carte judiciaire means that some local courts will close, but in return lawyers have wrung a concession from the previously “unmoveable” minister that they will be able to retire at 55, whereas public sector workers on the railways who at the moment can retire at 55 are being told they will have to work at least an extra 5 years to be the same as everyone else……well, everyone except a third of train drivers who have negotiated a separate agreement promising that whatever happens they will be able to retire 5 years before their colleagues (and what about the other two thirds?). In other words grab what you can while you can. Junior doctors have forced the government to backtrack on the reform which was aimed at helping the suffering in unpopular parts of France, the north, for example and the areas of deep rurality, where the less-well off are forced to live but now doctors will not be forced to look after them. Meanwhile the betting is against the president’s much vaunted institutional reforms ever seeing the light of day: proportional representation is unlikely to be accepted by the ruling UMP deputés (surprise surprise), the equally crucial clause ending double or triple electoral mandates probably won’t get past the senators (most of whom would personally lose out).

Indeed Sarkozy is facing ever more voluble criticism from his own side. There is a surprisingly strong piece in yesterday’s Liberation saying “it’s not yet rupture but there’s a real disenchantment”. If it is true, it is a tragic waste of probably the best opportunity France will have for a generation.

After months of productive talks with everyone concerned, the strangely named Grenelle on the Environment ended yesterday with a frankly unimpressive list of “Things to Do”. Most of what was agreed will take a minimum of two or three years to put in place (carbon taxes) or, in the case of TGV lines for freight or insulating old houses, at least twenty. Global warming is something we should all be doing something about now. At the same time the cost of what is proposed is high: measures which cost nothing and could be implemented this afternoon (lowering the maximum speed limit) have been binned: can’t risk anything that the punters don’t like. That at least shows how deep the commitment is. Even the carbon tax is not sure of acceptance, but will be “reflected upon” by Mr. Sarkozy. It cannot work unless the rest of Europe implements the same thing since it depends on a complete re-structuring of the (European) tax system. How many decades will that take Europe to agree? Sarkozy is fiddling while the world burns.

Faced now with the realisation that those heady election promises about reforming France are going to melt away like the Arctic ice cap unless he uses much greater strength and risks unpopularity, Sarkozy has decided to revert to the traditional role of a French president: fighting for France’s place abroad. Thus in the past week he has “triumphed” in Lisbon with the reformed treaty for the EU and “triumphed” in Morocco where he sold some TGV’s and perhaps a nuclear reactor. But his failure to sell any Rafale fighters is a classic example of the weakness of France’s policy of national champions: the bigger and more expensive the machine, the more risky its commercial potential. Selling components or tools may be less glamorous than hawking a fleet of Airbus, but as the Germans will tell you (or the Chinese with clothing) in the long run it brings in more cash. His other reason for going to Morocco was to discuss his beloved Mediterranean Union, but given the intractable jealousies between Morocco and Algeria and both countries’ extreme touchiness, that looks about as hopeful as the institutional reforms. From the PR point of view Sarkozy also messed-up the Morocco trip: slouching back in his armchair, his mind clearly elsewhere, during the contract signing ritual and cancelling his meeting with the Moroccan prime minister saying he was too tired, instead eating quietly with his two sons by his first marriage. Those who say that his divorce will not affect his politics underestimate the power of (his) love (as he told French youth during the election campaign “il n’y a rien de plus important au monde que d’aimer.”)

His third piece of foreign policy this week attracted less attention, but could have wide ramifications. On Monday he met Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel. Sarkozy took the opportunity to say many muscular things in support of Israel: he is against the Palestinians’ demand for an automatic right to return to land now in Israel and, less surprisingly, shares “identical” views with Olmert about Iran’s nuclear programme. “On the Iranian issue I couldn’t have heard things that fall more in line with my expectations,” said the Israeli prime minister.

But these tough remarks cuddling up to Israel are badly timed, with the approach of the 2nd anniversary of the riots in the French banlieues. According to those who work in those blighted places nothing has changed – certainly not for the better. Yes, there have been government initiatives, yes, money has been spent and will continue to be spent, some aspects of the physical environment have been improved and many hard-working, dedicated people are trying their utmost to give the people who live there a leg-up, but apparently the underlying problems are just the same: no resolution of the massive unemployment, which in turn generates equally massive despondency, which then suffocates every generation. The president talks tough on immigration, tightening quotas, telling his minister of immigration he’s not sending enough back home, imposing DNA testing – in other words sending strong signals to those living in the ghettos that they are a marginal, unwanted element of French society. Thus his immigration laws, a major and popular component of his election campaign and arguably his principal successes since taking office, may in the longer term come back to cause him greater social unrest.

Last month the Haut Conseil de l’Education published a damning report on the level of reading and writing, principally in French schools but by extension in universities too, but since then the Report seems to have died the death. Since the presidential election, a huge effort is being made to bolster optimism and positive thinking, thus anything resembling the old déclinologie, so popular over the past couple of years, is avoided. The English, on the other hand, seem to love decrying their own high level of illiteracy.

The Report says that 40% of eleven year olds are in different degrees illettré. That seems to me a massive over-simplification, lumping together those who cannot read or write at all (15%) with those who have problems with the perversities of French spelling. I was amazed that at 10 my son routinely used to confuse donner, donné and donnait when doing dictation, but was assured that c’est normale: at that age how could he understand the difference? But it had never occurred to me they could be considered the same – even as a child learning French as a second language. Apparently this confusion of similar-sounding words can last a lifetime: a study of 2nd year university students reading Modern Letters routinely found mistakes such as “il a juger”, la, l’a and là are interchangeable, as is et and est. Even the best ten year old in the class I teach quite happily writes “the cat and black and white”, but I’m sure by the time she gets to university she’ll see the difference. Indeed I’ve found that the kids I teach are far better at spelling (very simple) English than French: in tests I turn a blind eye on their English-into-French translations, otherwise they’d all get zero. Phonetically I can see whether they have understood the English or not and I don’t consider it’s my place to do the French teacher’s job.

Commentators on this depressing Report mitigate the poor showing by saying that French is one of the world’s most difficult languages. Experts tell you with great certainty that “it takes 10 years immersion to master it”. That’s the problem: if you say it’s difficult, the kids will find it difficult. Certainly some words that sound identical can be written many ways (saint, sain, sein, ceint), but surely context tells you instinctively which one to use: “the task was daunting: minus his nose by the end of the day he had done it all” clearly doesn’t make sense, so why write “La tâche était difficile: nez en moins à la fin de la journée….” ?

Some people say the rise of bad grammar and spelling is because the number of hours ten year olds are taught French has declined radically: in 1969 they had 15 hours a week, now it is closer to 9 ½. That’s to make way for English and éducation civique, so this illettrisme can be blamed indirectly on the global spread of English and the decline of parental guidance. I would have thought it might be better to ask whether the children could not spend a little more time at school. At present, with 16 weeks holiday, primary school children go to school for 36 weeks a year. But often for only 4 days a week. Thus 144 days at school out of 365, 6 hours a day. That might exhaust a 6 year-old, but surely at 9 or 10 a child can cope with just a little more? Indeed should cope with more, given the enormous change between primary school and secondary school routines . But many seem to have a fixation their little treasure can’t possibly do more than two days’ together at school.

Another reason is that the solutions (so far) to this kind of shaming report have always been provided by the Ministry of Education, in other words by graduates of grandes écoles - the French problem-solving system typified: hit it with an enarque. The grass-roots may be cursorily consulted but the elite generally pooh-pooh their ideas as bucolic fantasy. Again, having their language set, in every sense of that word, by an all-powerful and strangely respected Academy only aggravates the problem for many. To succeed in exams you need to write what has been called “literary French”: fewer and fewer families speak that kind of French at home. If your parents have always called a car a bagnole, why would you call it a voiture when you write your essay?

I would be very interested to know what other people think of this Guy Môquet business – I have very mixed views. For those living outside France, who probably have no idea that a huge fuss is being made today, the following may seem somewhat bewildering. Guy Môquet was a young Communist picked up by the French police on the 15^th October 1940. His offence was fly-posting Communist propaganda (an action made illegal by the French Daladier Government in September 1939, well before the German occupation). A year and a week later [corrected from a week] Môquet was shot, along with 26 other Communists, by the German forces as reprisal for the assassination (by a group of Communists) of the German military commander in the Loire-Inférieure. Môquet was 17 at the time.

His father, a member of the French parliament, had been arrested a year earlier by the French police because under entirely French law (Daladier again) the CP was proscribed after the Stalin/Hitler pact. Well before the arrival of the Germans, Môquet père had been sentenced to a French concentration camp in Algeria.

Everyone in France is talking about Môquet fils today (the anniversary of his death) because Nicolas Sarkozy has decreed that the very moving letter the young martyr wrote to his mother on the eve of his execution must be read out to every class in every lycée this morning, adding that this is to become an annual event. There is no other text from France’s long history which has to be read on a particular day in every school.

Nicolas Sarkozy discovered Môquet during the election campaign: it was his plume, his speech writer Henri Guaino who first brought Môquet into the candidate’s speeches and with great effect: the young man’s last letter is quite naturally heart-rending stuff. Once elected, Sarkozy decided that he would make the letter the corner-stone of his presidency: on the morning of his investiture he took everyone into the Bois de Boulogne to have the letter read. It became at once the thing to do: the trainer of the French rugby team read it to his lads moments before their first match against Argentina. However, it had the opposite effect of the Kiwi’s Haka: instead of giving them strength it seemed to unman them totally and they lost. Immediately many blamed the letter and by implication Sarkozy. Newspapers reminded us that when he was arrested, Môquet was carrying a rabidly anti-capitalist poem (also anti-semitic because in certain quarters in the 1930’s Jews were associated with unrestrained capitalism) and this is supposed to muddy our sympathies. I am not aware that any recent commentator has reminded us that Môquet was arrested by the French under French law, that he was resisting entirely French legislation enacted by a democratically elected French government.

Many teachers are refusing to read out the letter on the grounds that they resent being told by the State what they must do. Given that every day of their working lives they adhere religiously to a national curriculum laid down in detail by the same state, I find this somewhat illogical.

Sarkozy could be said to have a thing about French martyrs of the 2^nd World War: his first book was about the French Jewish politician Georges Mandel, a minister in various inter-war governments who fled France at the same time as De Gaulle (indeed was offered and refused a seat in General Spears’ plane, the seat was taken instead by De Gaulle), but went to North Africa. He was arrested, kept in the same prison as Daladier (whose law was responsible for the arrest of Môquet) from which Churchill tried unsuccessfully to rescue him, preferring him to De Gaulle as leader of the Free French. Mandel was transferred round various camps in Germany before being returned to Paris after D-Day to be a hostage and following the assassination of a Vichy minister, was taken out by the French police and shot just a few weeks before Paris was liberated.

Mandel was a conservative, his ideas closer to Sarkozy’s than Môquet’s. Mandel was arguably more heroic: throughout the 1930’s, just like Churchill, he continually warned against the rise of Hitler, while never glorifying Stalin as the PC did at that time. Both he and Môquet were killed because their compatriots had killed either a German or a French leader.

Sarkozy has decreed that Môquet’s letter shall be read out every year to serve as an example to today’s young of the combined virtues of resistance, duty to the nation and self-sacrifice. As I have said, the law Môquet was resisting was a French law, pre-dating Vichy and the arrival of the Germans. Of course we shall never know whether the young man really was willing to sacrifice his life: when he went out to post his propaganda sheets he cannot have expected that if caught he would be shot: the offense in itself was not a capital one. Probably if the German commander had not been assassinated by the French resistance at almost exactly the same time, neither he nor his 26 comrades would have been executed. Like so much in history it was pure coincidence that resulted in tragedy.

Yet, like so much in history, a simplified version of the story has been turned by a politician for his own purposes – yet I confess I don’t really see what, apart from the frisson always associated with these tragic events, Sarkozy hopes to achieve by this decree. If every day there were a different text, it would certainly make sense. But as the only one?

As everyone gears up for the Big Strike tomorrow, over whether or not some professions should be allowed special retirement privileges linked to the anti-social nature of their work, another much-less publicised strike came to an end this morning – the ten day junior doctors’ strike. The internes, or at least those hoping to work in the libérale, self-employed, part of the health system, were striking because they believed there was a move afoot to prevent them setting up practices in areas deemed to have too many doctors already (large towns, particularly in the southern half of the country, and more particularly on the Mediterranean – Montpellier for example). There was said to be pressure on them to set up instead where there are not enough doctors (France profonde). They felt this was unacceptable, went on strike for ten days and won their case. They have been promised there will be no restrictions on where they may set up their stall.

This is a spectacular (and, I repeat, less than publicised) retreat of policy, loss of nerve and defeat for common sense. In Montpellier there are too many doctors. I know of some who have so few patients they do not earn enough to make ends meet. Yet they stay, in the sun, and others continue to join them. Not that far away, in the Aveyron, Lozère and parts of the Gard, large rural areas are scarcely covered by two or three doctors, worked off their feet. My GP, I would guess in his mid 30’s, reckons to start work at 7.00 every morning and rarely finishes his house calls before 9.00 at night. If he can face it, he can work 7 days a week. If he takes a day off he risks losing patients to the man he refers to bitterly as “l’autre”. The system whereby patients could flit mindlessly from doctor to doctor (nomadisme médicale) has been tightened up, but is still engrained in many people’s heads. Of course as my GP says, there are two major advantages to being a country doctor: one is you see a much wider spread of medical problems than in a town (where there are specialists for every different type of sneeze), and two you earn a fortune. But, again as he says, “young doctors today” don’t want to work hard – or not that hard anyway, and want a varied and active social life, both of which I admit are hard to find in deeply rural France.

That’s from the doctor’s point of view. From the patients’ point of view (which is what the Minister of Health should have been defending), living in the country means a chronic lack of GP’s, self-employed physiotherapists, dentists and ophthalmologists (opticians can’t prescribe you glasses, so if you want a pair, you have to drive an hour and a half or more. An ophthalmologist in Millau told me there was not a single one in the whole of the Lozère department). It’s not that the individual service they provide is poor – it’s simply there are far too few of them to provide a proper service. It is not only rural France - large areas of the unpopular north - the Pas de Calais and areas on the Belgian border unvisited by tourists and unloved by many French, suffer the same chronic lack of doctors, especially in the hospitals. Nicolas Sarkozy recognised this and during the election campaign promised he would put an end to this surpopulation of doctors in certain areas and shortage in others. But last night his health minister backed down and gave in to the junior doctors who want to be able to choose where they live. And that’s the rub: reforms which adversely affect people who have become used to a high standard of living will simply not get through.

Surely the august Prospect Magazine (or at least its somewhat less august French political blog) is not going to insult its readers by adding to the idle speculation about Cecilia Sarkozy? We shall see…..
As we all know, there is a law in France which protects personal privacy. So potent is it that back in 2005 Nicolas Sarkozy was able to phone up the owner of Paris Match, his friend Arnaud Lagardère, and demand the instant dismissal of the editor for publishing a front-page photograph of Sarkozy’s wife with her then lover. Since that traumatic moment many journalists have protested about failing press freedom in France, but their protests do not seem to have led to any changes. Cecilia Sarkozy is once again hogging the limelight by her absence, upstaging everyone else simply by not being there – and the press dares not even mention the fact, let alone say why. “The Tribune”, a financial daily, ran a story that France’s first lady has spent the last 3 weeks in Geneva, but since then, silence. Speculation is rife, particularly in newspaper offices where apparently some editors know what is going on but do not dare pre-empt an official comment – presumably afraid of the Fatal Phone-Call.

That seems to me a worrying situation. Publishing what they know does not mean they have to copy the British gutter press with over-blown headlines and compromising photographs. There is a world of difference between deliberately digging up and paying large sums for details about someone’s sex life and writing soberly about things known by many journalists. Things that matter.

Cecilia Sarkozy is extremely important to France – not because the First Lady has a Constitutional role, but because Nicolas Sarkozy decided long ago that he wanted her to be important. Every article about her has stressed that she is (was?) his principal advisor, not necessarily on policy but on how that policy was put across. Her office was next door to his at the Ministry of the Interior and during the election campaign she made many very important strategic decisions. Since she has never expressed any personal political ambition, one can assume the decisions to elevate her to this semi-official position were in large part his (with her agreement). He decided to send her (and she agreed to be sent) as his emissary to Libya to negotiate the release of the Bulgarian nurses. It was not necessary to do that – the European Commissioner (also a woman, which nullifies one of Sarkozy’s principle justifications) had been negotiating for months and if despite that France wanted to get in there quickly to sew up a trade deal, his own Foreign Minister would have been better qualified than Madame Sarkozy. He has given her an important, if unofficial role and if that is about to change, if he has lost one of his chief advisors and emissaries (it was said that Mme Sarkozy would be sent to Columbia to negotiate the release of Ingrid Bettancourt) the media should be able to tell us. To hide behind “we are not going to spread rumours” is treating their readers/audiences as if they are complete fools. The French media, like every other, depends on publishing rumours – about possible take-overs, politicians’ intentions, a drop in sales, a rise in interest rates. Rumours about a hitherto extremely rare event – the break-up of the family life of a head of state while in office – are also important.

Rumour has it that the official announcement will come tomorrow, Tuesday. Rumour also has it that the announcement will include mention of a divorce (these rumours are spread by the French press, where evidently rumours of official announcements are not the same as rumours tout court). That will start speculation that if things have got as far as divorce, they were pretty bad at the end of July, when the president sent his wife to Libya. Did he give her that role in order to try to keep her interest, to keep the couple together? “Mere speculation!”, terrified media editors will cry. Maybe. But only by speculating will we ever find out the truth – and it’s important to know the truth about how a president runs his country. Who knows, M. Sarkozy might give the job of advisor to the next pretty woman who turns his head.

It looks as if next Thursday the railway unions will try their strength against the Government over the issue of special regimes, particularly for retirement. Nicolas Sarkozy and his ministers are determined that everyone shall work at least 40 years before they retire – at the moment some professions have special deals in which they can retire after 35 years or less because their work is (or was when the deal was made) particularly arduous or dangerous.

This post-War policy of breaking down society into segments (miners, teachers, fonctionnaires, farmers) has created one of the present ills of French society, according to the paper I mentioned on Tuesday, “La Societe de Défiance”, published by the Centre pour la recherche économique et ses applications. According to the authors Yann Algann and Pierre Cahuc, segmentation creates widespread distrust (défiance – lack of trust might be a better translation), and they paint a bleak picture of their compatriots lacking trust in their judicial system, trades unions, parliamentary system, bosses, fellow workers and, undoubtedly, her next-door.

Their paper is not a new study, but a synthesis of existing work, so the basic premise that the French lack trust in their fellows is taken as acquis. I’m not sure that in every case (such as the special retirement regimes) distrust is the right word – envy might be better, but it’s less politically correct. In some of the circumstances though, distrust is right: apparently 54% of French people have no confidence in their judicial system. 52% say you can’t get on in France unless you corruptly take advantage of an unequal system – but that doesn’t necessarily mean taking or giving back-handers, it refers, amongst other things, to [the mainly Socialist] teachers being able to wangle their children into the better schools regardless of Egalité or what the carte scolaire says. Again, envy would seem as strong as distrust, for the truism stated by the authors is that not everyone can have access to public things like housing, crèches or good schools and that obvious fact creates lack of confidence, or distrust in the system.

That in turn, the authors say, means that to a greater extent than citizens of other countries the French think it acceptable to cheat the taxman, the social security and public transport. Few believe that on principle you shouldn’t buy something you know is stolen, offer a bribe or take public money knowing you don’t deserve it.

In amongst some rather dodgy logic, the paper does have some wonderful insights: someone studied all the parking infringements in New York by official delegates to the UN (covered by diplomatic immunity): between 1997 and 2002 there were 150,000 illegally parked cars belonging to UN people! In the ranking, the otherwise rather self-righteous French came equal with the Indian and Laotian delegates.

Only 21% of French believe it is possible to have confidence in others (as oppose to about 60% in the USA and Scandinavian countries), and the authors blame this on a mixture of corporatisme (the segmentation of professions into different corps, each with its own conditions, bonuses, pensions) and étatisme (the state is omnipresent because it is forced to intervene between groups who cannot work things out themselves). The French welfare system encourages these differences between social groups, increasing public distrust, whereas the much-praised Scandinavian system treats everyone the same regardless of education or profession.

This same lack of confidence in others experienced by the French is bad for business – Adam Smith and the more recent Nobel-prize winning economist K. Arrow are quoted as saying that the essential ingredient for trade is trust and “a large part of the late development of a society is due to the lack of shared trust between its citizens.” The last 10 of the 100 page piece tries to convince that if the French trusted each other more they would earn more money – the authors quote Sweden as the nirvana in this respect – but by this time their logic was getting beyond me. Nearly half the population in France think competition has little to do with developing new ideas but instead appeals to man’s basest instincts (something I touch on in November’s France Profonde).

This paper’s conclusion seems to be that to get on in the world, French fear of competition must be overcome, and the best way is by state regulation, which seems at odds with their earlier argument that there is too much state. Throughout, Scandinavian countries are held up as the ideal model for the French to copy. This may be right (this month’s economic magazine Les Enjeux has an excellent article looking at the Danish model through the example of Lego [but I don’t think the link will enable you to read it]), but as I said last week, when advocating the Scandinavian model, few (French) people take into consideration that Sweden and Denmark, like the UK, have independent currencies with independent economic rules. France does not. Hence Sarkozy’s raging against the ECB: perhaps [heretical thought] giving France its own currency again will turn out to be Sarkozy’s equivalent of Tony Blair scrapping Clause 4 and Mrs. Thatcher the unions.

Two fascinating publications appeared this morning. The first, from theEcole des Mines, is a new classification of the world’s best places of higher education. Until now the reference has been the well-known Academic Ranking of World Universities, compiled by Shanghai University, based on how many past alumni have won major research prizes or made a splash in major scientific research journals. France does badly in this assessment partly (it is said) because most learned journals are in English, partly (more realistically) because in France even the prestigious grandes écoles do not rate research very highly. Their aim is to find the best and create from them the elite which will run France.

Given their poor rating in the Shanghai Ranking, it is not surprising that a French grande école decided to produce its own world classification. The Ecole des Mines considers that rather than research, it would be better to take the world’s top 500 companies, see where their current CEO’s received their higher education and then classify those places accordingly. The establishment which has produced the most CEO’s being considered the best. Using this criterion, Harvard comes out top, but more pertinent, France produces no less than five educational establishments in the top ten, America four, Japan one. Oxford (the whole university) is rated number eleven, equal with Yale and Keio.

For many who imagine that France wallows in airy-fairy theoreticians and is bad at beastly capitalist business this may come as a surprise. It is impressive that French post-graduate schools turn out so many top company directors, but a quick scroll down the list of the top 500 companies does not seem to produce that many French companies, and I didn’t notice enough mentions of the grandes écoles to be able to say that the Polytechnique, HEC, Sciences Po, ENA and the Ecole des Mines should occupy five out of the first ten places, so I am somewhat baffled as to how the ranking was arrived at – although I am sure that’s my lack and nothing to do with the Ecoles des Mines’ déontologie.

Another critique of the classification can be read at Telos.

The gulf between pure research (the Shanghai Ranking) and hard-nosed business is a timely subject, with the announcement of the Nobel prize for physics being awarded to Frenchman Albert Fert. M. Fert’s prize-winning research was in giant magnetoresistance – one of whose practical applications is in the hard-drive of every laptop, thus an example of research being used in highly competitive business. But although the research was done partly in France, the business-end came from IBM in the USA. As Arthur Goldhammer points out, France is very much at the cutting edge of physics, but it sadly lacks the links between the laboratory and the board room. French universities and grandes écoles consider education should be pure, unsullied by business interests or support – to their country’s detriment. So what are all these brilliant French CEO’s glittering at the top of the Ecole des Mines’ ranking doing?

Not enough for the country, would seem to be a conclusion of today’s other interesting publication, “La Société de Défiance », produced by the Centre pour la recherche économique et ses applications. Basically the authors of this paper find that the famous modèle français has made the French an intensely distrustful people: “of neighbours, trades unions, the public administration and the market. This distrust goes together with a more frequent [than in other countries] lack of good citizenship (incivisme) in the essential domains of the running the economy and the welfare state.” In their introduction the authors say that “a mix of corporatism and étatism du modèle français brings about this distrust and lack of loyalty,” and that both the latter undermine the efficiency and the equity of the economy and thus in turn foster more étatism and corporatism. The paper is long, I shall read it in full and write about it later in the week.

Thanks to Saturday’s two unexpected results in the rugby World Cup, those of us living in France now have to suffer a week in the pillory as the media sell copy stirring up that old chestnut, the hatred between the English and the French. I write “hatred” even though many will protest the sporting rivalry between the two countries is no more than good-natured joshing. Perhaps. Between two other countries I would agree, but between our two countries I am not so sure. It saddens and irritates me to think there many on both sides of the Channel who agree with the phrase used this morning on French radio that we are each others’ “hereditary enemy”.

A few years ago at a local smart charity dinner, I was delighted to find our host had placed me next to the young woman who had just given a fascinating talk on cooking in the 14th century (of which we were to sample a few delicacies that evening). As we sat down and introduced ourselves she came out with a completely natural, straight-faced “Oh you’re English. Je déteste les anglais.” It was partly the supremely matter-of-fact delivery which threw me. Had I been quicker off the mark I might have retaliated what a shame she had omitted from her talk on medieval cooking any mention of the much-appreciated flambée de Jeanne d’Arc, but her definiteness and insouciance about her apparent detestation of me and my compatriots drove everything from my head, pouring ice on any hopes of an agreeable couple of hours. In fact during our forced acquaintance she did soften a little and finally admitted it was really her husband (a military man not present) who hated the English – and that because of rugby.

I would have said it was the other way around. There is a deeply-held suspicion, if not down-right contempt between some English and French which has nothing to do with sport: it is just below the surface in many conversations ranging over many topics, our regular battles on the soccer or rugby pitch merely give it a respectable outlet. For me the problem is precisely that most of the time this mépris is kept under the surface: if people talked about it more openly, for instance if I’d had the courage to say to the young woman at dinner “What an extraordinary thing to say, why ever do you detest us?”, they might see how absurd it is, and how it is artificially exploited to whip us into a frenzy over a game which is still partly a matter of chance.

So every time the two nations meet on the field, we, especially those who have married into France, ponder to what extent expatriates are ex-patriots. I am often asked which side I support, and I invariably answer diplomatically that I hope only the best team will win. It doesn’t always happen because sometimes France wins, but that’s my hope.

Much of the anti-English hysteria which will be whipped up over the next five days is market-led. For the past month until last Saturday, the rugby World Cup had become a matter of enormous indifference to the French. Few understand its rules, even fewer its tactics, and France’s first-match defeat to a team deemed petit had convinced many that the game is of no national interest. Consequently all last week the media worked their socks off trying the impossible - raising interest in an apparently inevitable mauling by the All Blacks. They had to sell the New Zealanders’ game as something rare, beautiful and fascinatingly exotic, a spectacle not to be missed, a team so special that even defeat at their hands could be honourable. It worked, and according to TF1, France’s main TV Channel, Saturday’s viewing figures were “un record historique” of 16.6 million (since last year’s soccer World Cup attracted more than 22 million viewers for the France-Portugal match, “historique” is clearly a relative term). A great day for advertisers and a totally unforeseen windfall for the TV companies, who are confident that this coming Saturday they will get even higher figures (and an even higher advertising revenue). Especially if they keep playing up the ros-bif bashing.