It’s not easy to keep up with France’s hyperactive president. As psychiatrist Serge Hefez said of him in a recently published profile, “You just don’t know when he’s going to pull yet another rabbit out of the hat.” As irritated socialists and geriatric Gaullists have been quick to say, he risks being seen as more of a showman than a serious politician. Certainly, he’s got his flash side but he’s achieving things, clearly changing the face of French politics.

To start with, he seems to have wiped out the National Front. Jean-Marie Le Pen blusters, of course, but his hugely indebted party has been compelled to sell off its Paris headquarters and seems unlikely to return as a serious electoral force. Sarkozy has done this by taking on board the sensible components of the Front’s programme (which certainly exist) and dumping the nastiness. Secondly, as we write, it looks as if we now have a President and a Prime Minister who are prepared to deny to the street its traditional role in effectively resisting government policy. Some examples of this were simply grotesque: employees of the Paris Opera demonstrated to defend their “special regime” established over three centuries ago by Louis XIV which allows a dancer, for example, to retire at forty on 90 per cent of salary plus gilt-edged health benefits – and free opera tickets for life. The cosseted prancers and warblers along with railway employees and other state workers seem like falling into line with Sarkozy’s determined efforts to introduce equality into the pensions system. Hard-line Lefties in the unions may growl, but a clear majority of the French are on the President’s side.

They also, polls show, approve of his firm line on the environment which means they will be less likely to be poisoned by pesticides or (maybe) GM foods and they’ll have to give up wire filament light bulbs and face financial penalties for driving polluting vehicles. In this field, Sarkozy doesn’t just offer the kind of bland waffle dispensed by Chirac but gets laws pushed through fast. The big question, though – and that affects most of us – is whether he can, as promised, increase the nation’s purchasing power (pouvoir d’achat). He aims to do this by new measures ranging from allowing employees to trade in for cash their time-credits (RTT) for working over 35 hours through limiting rent increases to scrapping tax on overtime payments. How well all this will work out it’s too early to say. Over the past year the French saw prices spiralling on many things from apples through toilet rolls to train tickets. If Sarko’s measures leave them with more spare cash in their pockets they’ll be laughing and so will he.


From Riviera Reporter Issue 125: Feb/March 2008

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