This is a belated answer to C. Maddock, who asked me how the planned cuts in France’s defence programme would affect French soldiers in Afghanistan. This week’s Canard Enchainé (with help from the excellent blog Secret Defense, a spin-off from Liberation) gives an insight. First of all numbers: the re-enforcements sent by Sarkozy, called Task Force 700, actually consist not of 700 men but 560 (back in March the initial announcement, repeated when Sarkozy addressed the combined Houses of Parliament in London, said “slightly more than 1,000 troops). The reason given is that each tour of duty will last four months and at the moment there are not enough men to make up the requisite forces to 700, let alone 1,000. The first batch arrived on the 9th of this month, setting up some 60 km from Kabul in the active province of Kapisa and are being inspected today by the Defence Minister Hervé Morin (Barak Obama is also visiting Kabul today).

A senior officer in Kabul let it be known that French “ambitions are big, but the means are small. You’d think a first step might be to give soldiers the means to do their job….. if not it would be better to leave them in France.” He says “the soldiers’ outfits are green, unsuitable for the Afghan terrain, and their footwear “rangers”, again not good in that climate.” Unlike the Americans’, the French supply-carrying logistics vehicles are not armoured. Worse, the armoured vehicles themselves are not equipped to neutralize mines. There are twenty of the necessary bits of neutralizing kit sitting on armoured vehicles in the Lebanon: they will be stripped out and sent to Afghanistan. “Because of budget restraints the armoured vehicles in Afghanistan will not be equipped  with these “neutralisers” before early 2009. At the earliest…”, the senior officer continues.

Mostly Task Force 560 is going to have to rely on the light AMX-10RC reconnaissance tank which began life 30 years ago in 1976. So far only five have arrived in Qatar (on the 9th July)by ship. They will be flown to Kabul in hired Antonovs because the French do not possess an aircraft equipped to transport them. Originally there were going to be eleven, operating in three teams of three plus two spares, but it seems that five is all they will get: one team of three plus two spares. Once they arrive, according to other officers on the ground, they won’t be much use: “they’re too wide to go through some of the villages, and since the roads won’t allow them to travel fast they’ll be sitting ducks for the Taliban”. They will be operated at first by Foreign Legionnaires from Orange, who will be replaced by Chasseurs from Gap who, at present unfamiliar with the vehicle, are being trained up for it.

Sitting safely in rural France it’s hard to know whether the Canard’s story is accurate or exaggerated – and I have never met an army officer who said he had all the kit/men he wanted/needed. But it does not sound reassuring, particularly since the Taliban have been becoming more active in the region.

Yesterday (Friday) morning at 1.00 a.m. two French NGO’s were kidnapped by some Taliban guerrillas. The two men were working for Action Contre la Faim, which has been in the country since 1995. It seems unlikely that the kidnapping was a coincidence, for ever since President Sarkozy announced that he was sending more troops to the Afghanistan the Taliban have condemned France. Also the timing seems co-ordinated with the Defence Minister’s visit today. Given the publicity hostages get in France, the Taliban are presumably hoping to focus public attention on the French Task Force and mobilise opinion (in France) against the decision.

As President Sarkozy’s popularity continues to fall, an article in Rue 89 suggests that it’s possible he doesn’t care about those ratings anyway. Perceived wisdom is that all politicians are hyper-sensitive to opinion polls, weekly, almost daily adjusting their policies to catch the highest number of votes. Sarkozy, called a populist by many, would seem to be the prime example of this sort of popularity-obsessed politician. But the poll-expert writing for the on-line newspaper says no. He suggests that desire for popularity is not Sarkozy’s driving force but “the impression of power, of being someone who can do things others cannot.” The author quotes all those times that Sarkozy has ostentatiously shown-off his enjoyment of power: his relationship with women, his ostentatious tee-shirt with NYPD stamped on it, his turning up late for lunch with Bush, his lack of respect in the presence of the Pope, continually checking his phone. There are also plenty of occasions when Sarkozy has had the courage, if you want to call it that, to say things that other apparently dare not. But is that courage or foolhardiness? Some would argue that it took courage to invade Iraq. Apparently most of the 36-38% of die-hard Sarkozy fans say they like him for his courage.

Often, it seems to me, lack of experience/knowledge, which is also a blindness to reality, is mistaken for courage. The young are often considered more courageous than the middle-aged because some are happy to risk all, but often because they do not know the risks: traders on the currency and commodity markets, for example. Once they start to think beyond the immediate and understand they are playing with (and likely to lose) the life-savings of ordinary people, they tend to slow down a little. Or stop.

This concept of thinking things through a little more carefully is exactly what diplomats are trained to do, and perhaps why they apparently “do” so little. Diplomacy, as I have said before, is precisely what Sarkozy lacks. And he is very proud of that – saying that, unlike the mealy-mouthed diplomat, he speaks his mind, calls a spade a spade etc. He may believe, according to the Rue 89 article, that people do not re-elect Mr. Nice Guy but the person who has courageously done what nobody else dares. And, to go one step further, the person who is spat upon gains huge respect in the eyes of some – Rue 89 cites Le Pen as an example of that. They re-elect the candidate who is quite obviously powerful: Margaret Thatcher after the Falklands War, or Bush using the slogan “The most powerful man in the free world”.

“Sarkozy is part of the first generation of presidents truly familiar with opinion polls,” says the article. “His predecessors’ gurus were publicity men. Sarkozy’s is Pierre Giacometti, former director of political polls at IPSOS.”

As time and Sarkozy’s presidency go on there is a growing polarisation between those who believe everything he says and does is an orchestrated mise en scène, closely following a script: a conspiracy, in other words, of total control (which appeals to those who want France to be seen to be great), and on the other hand those who see his actions as the haphazard expression of a man who knows little of the real world and understands even less, educated first by the makers of television soap operas and later by politicians, a man who shows signs, under stress, of being unhinged. There are, unfortunately, many examples of the latter – his reckless, insouciant handling of the economy would be just one. More than the currency trader, however, he is playing with the livelihoods of an entire nation.

The French press has been so obsessed first with Ingrid Betancourt and then with Sarkozy and the Chinese that a key piece of his long-awaited reforms has passed through the lower house almost unnoticed. A piece of legislation which, once adopted by the senate, “spells the end of the 35-hour week”, according to some.

In fact the legal working week remains 35 hours, with the maximum fixed at 48 hours: this particular piece of legislation affects mainly managers who are compensated for over-time by days-off rather than money. It raises the maximum number of days they may work each year from 218 to 235 – translated that means a 5-day week for 47 weeks – or what most of us would call an ordinary week plus 5 weeks’ holiday. That’s their max. And many are complaining: what about Bank Holidays! In France Bank Holidays add (from memory) another 10 days (two working weeks) time off a year. The CGC, the managers’ union, has called this a return to the last century – as if that were deep in the Dark Ages and not a mere 8 years ago. In reality few companies work their managers more than 210 days a year at the moment (8 days fewer than the max), so the thought is that not many will push their white-collar workers to the punishing limit of 5 days every week.

It was cunning to put the debate at the start of the summer holidays, and fortuitous that one of those too-rare feel-good moments (the release of Mme Betancourt) hogged the limelight, but even so I feel this icon of Socialist thinking no longer arouses much interest. By the time we reach the new strike-season in September the legislation will be on the statute book and my guess is that most people will have their minds on other things. The opposition in the Assemblée Nationale was luke-warm.

Nevertheless Le Monde carries a host of emails from managers reacting angrily to the legislation. Some see themselves as 21st century serfs, another points out that under the existing 35-hour week France has created some of the best IT companies in the world so why change it? I would suggest that the people who created them, like creative people anywhere, do not count the hours or days they work. On the other hand it clearly is not fair for employers to demand their managers work longer for the same money. Above 218 days a year they have to be paid 10% more, but many in this Le Monde piece prefer time-off, arguing that keeps them healthier and therefore better able to be efficient when they do work. It will be fascinating to see whether the blue-collar wage-earners back them when the striking season resumes and equally fascinating then to see whether the President is right that “Nowadays nobody notices when there is a strike”. That provocative and singularly inept statement struck a chill through republican France, which believes fervently not only in the right to strike but in the power of striking too. However it may be that, as in other things, Sarkozy has his finger on the popular pulse.

Three short reflections on M. Sarkozy’s first day as “President of Europe”: first of all, as expected, Sarkozy began his Presidency as he presumably means to go on – by using his position of visibility and power aggressively to sow discord and division at exactly the moment when unity is called for. As I wrote yesterday, a diplomat he is not. He tells the Polish President what to do (shades of Chirac), he tells the ECB what to do (M. Sarkozy has never tolerated the ECB’s most important asset, its political independence), and he tells off the Trade Commissioner (who propitiously happens to be British, home of evil globalisation) for daring to even contemplate negotiating the CAP, while also singling out the same person as the principal cause of the EU’s woes. M. Sarkozy calls these somewhat intemperate and aggressive remarks “debate” (knowing that neither the Trade Commissioner nor the head of the ECB will/can reply in the same aggressive language – “one should never be rude,” my Brodie-like aunt used to say, “to those who cannot be rude back.”). M. Sarkozy’s idea of debate is heavily weighted.

Secondly: one reason for these authoritarian, aggressive remarks is a semantic misunderstanding: in France the word “president” has come to mean someone all powerful (the French President is the most powerful job in Western world). Confusing his role in France with his temporary post in the EU, M. Sarkozy is applying the French definition to the Presidency of the Council of the European Union – he seems to believe that, as in France, when he speaks it is law. Thus he believes that other heads of state (Irish, Polish) and most certainly the European Commissioners like Peter Mandelson are subordinate to him, there to do his bidding, as if a foreign head of state were a mere French prime minister and a Commissioner a French fonctionnaire. Unless someone puts him right, this misunderstanding will be an on-going source of conflict during the next 6 months. In English one might call the President of the Council of the EU “the Chairman”. But the French word for chairman is……..“président”.

Thirdly, and following, M. Sarkozy’s key idea expounded yesterday that the EU’s primary function is to protect its citizens. Again a very French idea, long established, with its roots in the infallible pope and the all-powerful king. Each is regarded as (and used to be called) “father”. Under the 5th Republic the idea of an all-protecting father figure returned (although of course previously Marshall Pétain had embodied exactly the same thing). Even now when it rains too much or is too hot (or the price of fuel/houses/food is too high) the people concerned rush to the president demanding help (and fully expect him to provide money), rather than doing the Darwinian thing, adapting their life-styles to cope with the natural changes in our world. So again, Sarkozy is applying this French definition of “président” to his European role. He believes that what Europeans must want is some father-figure at their head, who will hold their hand and shield them from what are presented as the horrors of our world: free trade, globalisation, banks, Peter Mandelson etc. Quite the reverse of what many consider the EU’s basic function – being a rather successful market-place. The market-place is what many French people are said to be afraid of – another reason for M. Sarkozy, on his first day, to single out Commissioner for Trade as the enemy number one.

As so often in politics, there’s a feeling of having been here before. As today, just a year ago everyone in France was excitedly/anxiously looking forward to a Sarkozy Presidency. Last year France, this year Europe.

Last year commentators were quoting Milton Friedman’s “tyranny of the status quo” – unless a new government “makes major changes in the first few months after being elected, the tyranny of the status quo will assert itself and prevent further change.” Indeed the new President started with a bang, but six months after his election Sarkozy’s mind was more on women than affairs of state. Now he’s changed, he assures us, all that is behind him, but we are still waiting for the reforms, those big changes he promised to get France up and running and for which he was elected. Even as late as last April I was saying that he had time to get things done before he and his top people became enmeshed in Europe. Some things have been started, certainly, but not enough. A plethora of bills have passed through parliament, but France is still lacking any real remedy to her structural problems. And here we are – the fateful first of July has arrived and what has he achieved? Most French people seem to share my disappointment.

Now, with so much unfinished business at home, he turns to Europe. At home he has an absolute parliamentary majority and no opposition: the Socialist Party is still riven by internal feuding, indeed has lost credibility to such an extent that the extreme left – anti-capitalist, revolutionary – is seriously poaching their voters. If Sarkozy has not got his reforms through in those politically ideal conditions, what chance has he in a situation which Anand Menon, a professor of European politics writing in the FT, described aptly and beautifully as “herding cats”? 27 of the furry beasts – some highly-strung with impeccable pedigrees, others downright moggies battling over scraps left in the gutter, all of them thinking only about themselves. The situation is made worse when the person doing the herding has a reputation for divisiveness. One thing Sarkozy has proved to us is that he is not a diplomat.

Commentators have written reams about what Sarkozy hopes to achieve in his brief six-month stint as President of the Council – most seem certain that he won’t actually finish much. If his form so far is anything to go by, they are right. But one measure which is hugely important to Sarkozy yet is treated with some embarrassment if not totally ignored by foreign correspondents is his Mediterranean Union. Only last week, as part of his Mediterranean manoeuvring, Sarkozy was vaunting in Jerusalem that he is “the peace facilitator” – a cry enthusiastically taken up by the French press who would love (as we all would) to see him (or anyone) bring peace to Israel and Palestine. If he achieved that it would be the corner-stone of his Mediterranean Union and crown his Presidency of Europe. In just a fortnight’s time he hopes to get Mediterranean leaders as disparate as Colonel Gaddafi, Syria’s Bashir Assad, Ehud Olmert and Algeria’s Bouteflika sitting round the same table in Paris – a task which makes herding cats seem elementary.

But he does this just at the moment Israel has re-started making increasingly aggressive noises about taking out Iran’s nuclear installations. This week the Economist takes this “spike in the chatter” seriously and looks at the real danger of a military strike during the transition period between the US election and the swearing-in of the new President – coincidentally the tail end of France’s watch when all concerned will be feeling ragged. If they are right, that would put the final nail into France’s presidency of Europe: Sarkozy is known to agree with Israel on its Iran policy, although whether he would endorse anything as major as a military strike is another matter and where he would attempt to drag Europe in such circumstances is anybody’s guess.

It is exactly 8 years since France was last President of the Council of the EU – a Presidency, again to quote Anand Menon, “widely regarded as one of the worst in the Union’s history”. A Presidency which culminated in the Treaty of Nice – whose inadequacies and failings spawned the ill-fated Constitution and thus everything that follows: the French and Dutch No, intense and almost terminal navel-gazing, the Treaty of Lisbon etc etc. Since, faute de mieux, we still have to make do with that ill-begotten Treaty, it lingers as the French legacy from their last Presidency. Sometimes it is wiser to set your sights lower and leave the cats sunning themselves happily in their separate corners of the garden.