Not yet rupture, but “a real disenchantment”
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.