According to French President Francois Hollande, “France is better!” — the kind of entertaining verbal acrobatics that leaves everyone speechless, expect those citizens who wonder whether it was another one of those jokes the president likes so much.
Actually, Hollande may not have been that wrong since France, indeed, may be doing very well, considering the troubling issues the country is currently experiencing.
Let’s review a few of them: a number of terrorist attacks by extremists; trade union strikes (namely, by the communist-linked General Confederation of Workers, or CGT), which represents no more than 3 per cent of the working class, but still takes the country hostage due to its stronghold in the public service; and of course, a socialist government with no longer a majority in parliament and supported by a president whose favourable ratings are at 16 per cent — a record low.
The government holds responsibility for the present chaos (repeated strikes in air and railway transportation, gasoline and electricity shortages deriving from illegal blockades, violent demonstrations — hooligans who set a police car ablaze in the centre of Paris were released three days later by a court).
A late decision by Hollande to try and pass a new Labour Law enflamed an already difficult situation marked by high unemployment. The law was not that revolutionary, especially after the government agreed on so many amendments denaturing its spirit and possible efficiency, but Hollande was elected on a ‘left’ programme: many of his partisans who did not understand his sudden change of attitude simply decided they would get his scalp, even to the detriment of the social peace.
One could explain to such political dinosaurs that allowing employers to dismiss employees when the business is not there is the best way to make them recruit when business grows again. But the archaic CGT prefers to ‘protect’ the employed workers versus the unemployed ones; it cannot accept a new system allowing SME’s to decide on their workers’ status at their own operating levels (and not the one of a general branch of activity), thus depriving a centralised union of maintaining an outdated influence (and revenues linked to it). Yet, even though being representative of so few,. This diehard attitude explains the present disorders — and it is a pity a government did not predict them, especially ten months ahead of a general election.
That being said, it is not by chance that the strikers mainly belong to the civil service, an employer who allows people to work 15 days less annually than private workers, who pays a higher pension and who keeps people on board their entire working lives.
France, it is safe to say, is also a country where the president of the parliament can stay in office after being defeated in a local election; a country where bands of fanatics can challenge the authority of the state with impunity, as the expansion plans of the Nantes airport or blockade of Place de la Republique in Central Paris have shown; a society in which hooligans destroying public equipment are left untouched, because the police are not authorised to react.
If one would add a raving fiscal system, a soaring immigration issue and more importantly, a loss of common cultural references, many ingredients are present for a future populist adventure, wherever it comes from (National Front’s Marine Le Pen or Left Front’s Jean-Luc Melanchon’s scatter-brained fans). It is a revealing fact that the near-miss election of a rightist leader in Austria last week, the growth of the populist party in Denmark or of the AfD in Germany, all occured in countries not affected by high unemployment but on the contrary, in places where populations enjoy high social benefits.
There must be something else that the economy doesn’t offer, and it will be a long way before a next French President is able to put together the puzzle of a reconciled population sharing common values. Meanwhile, Palaeolithic trade unions, with their rear-guard or fleeting one-day battles show the cowardice of has-been politicians, are the menu for the day. But despite all that, France goes on because it is able to survive these evils.
Beyond its unique landscape and testimonies of history lies a certain art of living (including an undisputed cuisine), a universal way of reasoning that spread all over the world, farsighted entrepreneurs pushing boundaries every day, and a national army standing among the best in the world. France is doing well, also because, as former Renaissance King Francois I said, “a country is not strong because it is powerful, but because it is cultured”.
Luc Debieuvre is a French essayist and a lecturer at Iris (Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques) and the Faco Law University of Paris.