Category Archives: France

Potatoes are Root Vegetables

Posted on by
1

Though not a square-root vegetable, at least not a square-root or death vegetable when you get down to it at the Brussels bargaining table.

The Kaczynski twins are providing some sparks in the run-up to this summit, and they are every bit as ham-handed as noted below and by Henry over here. One level of the game is to try to get Poland permanently into the EU big leagues with a prominent display of obstreporousness. This has a long, if not entirely honorable, history within the European institutions. See chair, empty and handbag, Thatcher’s. But what these episodes cost France and the UK in long-term ill will may well have been greater than the headline gains they resulted in. At any rate, the current potato casserole shows that Polish politicians have mastered the EU skills of brinksmanship, populist posturing and feather ruffling. Whether they have mastered the more productive arts is yet to be seen.

On the other hand, there really isn’t much time left to get an unconstitution (my word for the next EU treaty) rolling. Elections to Parliament are in 2009. Almost all of 2008 will be required for ratification. That leaves the second half of 2007 to fix the details. The Portuguese presidency, as worthy as it assuredly will be, won’t have the resources to put behind a treaty push that the German one has. And Merkel’s background has made her an honest broker on Central European issues in a way no other current leader I can think of could match. She’s been good enough at cajoling that Germany’s role as largest contributor has almost never been mentioned. But there’s that, too.

Anyway, as almost always in things EU, compromise at the last possible moment remains the way to bet.

French Parliamentary elections update

Posted on by
5

The final results of the French Parliamentary elections 2007 are in. The UMP (Union pour un mouvement populaire) gets 324 seats as opposed to 359 in 2002, the Socialist Party & its allies together have 207 as against 149 in 2002, François Bayrou’s centrist Mouvement démocrate (MoDem, ex UDF) gets 4, the Communist Party gets 15 seats and Le Nouveau Centre (ex UDF) gets 22.

Le Pen’s Front National has been annihilated and reduced to its hardcore grassroots. According to today’s Le Figaro 54% of FN voters stayed home, 27% voted for the Right and 19% voted for the Left.

The Left’s surprisingly strong showing in the second round has been able to stem the blue tidal wave, even though the UMP maintains a strong majority. As Alex already noted earlier one reason for this is MoDem voters swinging their way. Another reason could very well be Sarkozy’s recent talk about “the social VAT”. The idea was to raise VAT to contain outsourcing and improve competitiveness by making consumers carry a part of the social security burden.

It is also interesting to note that the share of female representatives rose from 12.2% in 2002 to 18.5% in 2007 and that the median age of representatives is now 55 (source: paper version of Le Figaro) . The Assemblée overall got a bit younger.

In the meantime the new government has also been announced. The complete list of secretaries can be found here at Le Figaro or here at the BBC News Site. One interesting newcomer: Rachida Dati (video), Minister of Justice. Could she, her parents being of North African descent, become a symbolic figurehead for a French equivalent of the American Dream? She herself plays down the importance of her ethnic background, but just imagine what the very concept of a Rêve Française could do to integration and the overall image of immigrants. Those readers of AFOE who still remember me after my hiatus already know the drill: discuss in comments. If you need some inspiration, compare:

From this article in The Independent on US presidential candidate Barack Obama:

This family history, coupled with a gentle manner and a political message of reconciliation and healing, make Mr Obama one of a select group of blacks – Tiger Woods and Colin Powell are two others that come to mind – who transcend race. Whites do not feel threatened by them. Rather they make Americans feel good about themselves and a society in which this sort of ascent is possible.

And from the BBC News profile on Rachida Dati:

Lawyer Rachida Dati, named as French justice minister by President Sarkozy, is the first person of North African origin to hold a top government post in Paris. She was born in 1965 to an Moroccan mason father and an Algerian mother, one of 12 children raised in humble circumstances. At the age of 16, she started working as a carer in a private clinic. The premature death of her mother forced her to look after her younger sisters and brothers.

Not just in America?

Late night addendum

Tonight on French television news I heard a nice summary of Fillon’s diverse second cabinet, which includes several young people: “Everything the Left dreamt of has now been realised by the Right”. Sarkozy & Co have managed to rejuvenate, diversify and somehow emancipate French high office. And they have reached out to the Left and Centre. Is this truly the beginning of a nouvelle vague in French politics? We’ll see.

Regarding the emancipation, women that are now holding high offices, there is Justice Minister Rachida Dati, of course, but we now also have Christine Lagarde, the first female Finance and Economy Minister of a G7 country. See also this article in the Financial Times. I saw Lagarde, the fifth most successful business woman in Europe in 2002, profiled on tv and was immediately struck by her posture and her impeccable English. Classy lady and no doubt very competent. Will she be popular? We’ll have to wait and see how she will handle the hot irons of the “social VAT” and the envisioned relaxation of the 35-hour week law.

And then there are also junior ministers Fadela Amara and Rama Yade. Fadela Amara is the founder of the egalitarian women’s right organisation Ni putes ni soumises. Their main slogan is “Egalité, Laïcité, Mixité”, roughly translated as “Equal, Secular, Mixed”. She has been appointed junior minister in charge of towns.

Rama Yade is, in her own words, “everything that politicians are not: female, young, black and muslim”. This young politician of Senegalese descent is now junior foreign office minister with a responsibility for human rights.

I do not think a Left majority could have done a much better job in forming a government. At least not until they reform their party, throw out some heavy weights that are blocking progress and sort out a few internal issues that are really not that interesting to voters.

Tidal Wave Fails to Devastate Rue de Solférino

Posted on by
1

Well, we shall wait to see the pundits explain exactly why the planned “vague bleue” for Nicolas Sarkozy failed to wipe out all traces of socialism in France as predicted. Leszek Kolakowski once described his Theory of the Infinite Cornucopia, which states that there exists an Infinite Cornucopia of reasons that can be invoked after the fact for whichever event actually happens. No doubt the cornucopia will be emptied and licked clean.

Le Monde reports – the PS has actually gained seats from last time, and the doomsodden predictions are exploded. Current forecasts put the UMP on 311-320 seats as against 359 in 2002, the PS on 210-212 compared with 149 last time out, the Communists on 17-18 (still in with a chance of saving their status as a parliamentary group), the Greens clinging on to four seats, the Nouveau Centre (the pro-Sarkozy UDFers) with 20 seats, and Francois Bayrou’s Mouvement Democrate with four seats. Le Pen gets zilch. Philippe de Villiers’ barking-right MPF gets anywhere between 2 and 6 seats.

It’s the leadership that suffered, though. Alain Juppé, the ex-prime minister and ex-con who was tapped to run a new, giant ministry of transport, infrastructure, energy and the environment, lost his seat in Bordeaux to the Socialist mayor. Arno Klarsfeld, one of the Right’s intellectuals, also got the order of the boot. Essentially everywhere, the MoDem voters swung to the Left.

So did François Hollande, although personally rather than politically. It emerged today that his partner, Ségoléne Royal, has thrown the First Secretary out of their home. Le Figaro found this such shattering news that they ran it on the front page lead, as a tiny news-in-brief ticker mentioned the insignificant detail that, well, the left got a majority of votes cast.

Laurent Fabius and Jean-Claude Cambadélis, who both rushed to the cameras with prepared doomsaying about how the PS must be “refounded” (translation = must be led by me), may be feeling a little stranded by the wave’s failure to arrive.

The Sky, the Sea

Posted on by
7

Armscontrolwonk has a seriously unreported scoop about the great Czech radar kerfuffle. Namely, why is the US playing down the capabilities of the one element of the missile defence plan that actually works, and wouldn’t need anything as politically contentious as a new missile base? Defence geeks will already guess what we’re talking about, which is the capability of the US Navy’s Aegis air defence cruiser to shoot at missiles in the boost phase. It seems the Missile Defense Agency isn’t keen on the notion.

There’s a lot going for it. For a start it, ah, works – the problem is much simpler. In the boost phase, the rocket is going up, but not covering much ground towards you, so it’s easier to shoot at. And the enemy ends up with the bits. Ships go to sea, and lurk in international waters – they can move to cover a specific threat, and don’t need to be based very near their patrol areas.

So, a suggestion. ACW mentions a souped-up version of the SM-3 rocket that’s being developed with the Japanese. They, after all, have bought four destroyers equipped with the missiles and the fancy radar and computer systems. Why, then, can’t Europe buy its own? A lot of objections to the whole plan are based on them being “American” bases. After all, we can’t be totally sure that the missiles would hurtle up to intercept nukes inbound to London, Vienna, Toulouse, or Tallinn – can we? So why not have our own? – during the cold war we thought this argument very important with regard to offensive nuclear weapons. Presumably, such a purchase would bring in lucrative workshare for Thales, Astrium, Matra-BAE Dynamics & Co.

And you could even call it a force de défense spatiale tous azimuts. Ships sail, right? Including to the North Atlantic, if need be. There is, however, a probby. Putting ships in the eastern Mediterranean is easy enough. Putting them in the high North and the North Sea is politically and militarily easy, although it’s a tough job in winter. The Baltic? Well, there’s nothing to stop you, and both sides are in friendly hands. The Russians wouldn’t be happy. But then, they wouldn’t anyway. ACW, though, reckons you might need one in the Black Sea.

Special international agreements exist regarding the transit of the Straits, to which Russia is a party. Specifically, you can’t send aircraft carriers through. An Aegis ship is no carrier, but that don’t mean they aren’t going to make a big fuss about it. Update: WSI Brussels Blog has more.

Inverse Nixon Theory

Posted on by
4

It’s been said in the past – indeed, it used to be conventional wisdom – that unlikely right-wing governments were more likely to make peace, because they enjoyed credibility and a tough reputation. More obviously, conservatives long enjoyed a reputation for “fiscal credibility”, which supposedly helped them to control inflation by giving the impression that they would either be willing to sit on the money supply, or trade-off unemployment for inflation along the Phillips curve.

Curiously, with what is commonly taken to be a swing to the Right in Germany and France, we’re seeing the opposite. One of Angela Merkel’s first acts on taking office was to announce a future rise in consumption taxes, which isn’t very much different in terms of public perception to cutting them in the meantime. Nicolas Sarkozy has since announced that he’s going to have a pause in the reduction of the national debt – read, reflate the economy somewhat. Specifically, as he’s promised to hand out a €20 billion “fiscal shock”. But nobody appears to be very worried. It’s a big contrast to five minutes ago, when modalities of the Eurosystem’s breakdown were a regular topic on AFOE..

Compare the keenness of the Schröder, Jospin, and de Villepin governments to stick to the script of the Stability Pact, come what may. (No, de Villepin wasn’t a social democrat, but Sarko certainly campaigned as if he had been.) There’s a non-trivial argument that the pact was a serious economic mistake. It would certainly be interesting if it only survived because the Left was paranoid about seeming over lefty, and especially if the continental economy’s uptick had something to do with the Right being able to let it ride.

Président ou Présidente?

Posted on by
2

The French are still making up their mind [Update - they have made up their mind: Nicolas Sarkozy has been elected President - more soon]. Once again in record numbers – the only official figures released so far estimate the voter turnout at noon at 34,11%, the highest number since 1974, apparently. One winner of the Presidential race is therefore clearly institutional democracy – although burning cars is probably considered a way of political expression by some, not least, Ségolène Royal, who, earlier this week, warned that a Sarkozy victory could lead to violent protests in some Banlieues. While that is certainly not entirely out of the realm of the possible, and Sarkozy’s reaction was appropriately forceful, accusing her of fanning the (possible) flames, I doubt it was a particularly clever move on Royal’s behalf, to end her campaign by scaring voters. Apart from that, she’s probably also lost all votes of those about 3000 policemen who are now spending the evening in the suburbs to preempt any possible social unrest.
Continue reading →

On the back of the drag curve

Posted on by
3

Jean-Marie Le Pen has, as per tradition, called for mass abstention in the second round. He always does this, but it’s likely to be significant this time round—obviously, if he was obeyed, the loss of 10.44 per cent would be a significant change in the rapport des forces indeed.

And you have to wonder why anyone who votes for a party that is little else than a cult of personality around him would not follow his advice. Still, most people seem to think his votes will go to Nicolas Sarkozy. I’m not so sure.

After all, you can rat but you can’t re-rat. If the pessimistic case is true—the FN didn’t do badly, its voters were stolen by Sarko—then they are already gone, leaving only the stahlhelmfraktion of diehards behind. Who are by definition unlikely to shift.

On the optimistic side, as previously noted, the pollsters placed Le Pen at between 10 and 14 per cent at the beginning of the campaign, and depending where they started, at the same value at the finish. Seeing as the trends, or rather trendlessness, all agree, it looks like he started off with 10 per cent and neither gained nor lost votes through the campaign.

That’s pretty dire for a third- or fourth-party insurgent, who you’d expect to benefit from campaigning, more coverage, and especially the last few days’ mandatory equal access. Me, I reckon AFOE’s demographic hobbyhorse is to blame, or credit. Very simply, Le Pen voters are old, like the man himself, and they are dying out. To achieve a positive rate-of-climb, the FN has not only to recruit new voters faster than it loses codgers, it has to find them from new demographics. (This can of course be overstated. The biggest voting block in the first round was composed of candidates who found it necessary to explicitly address people who are still pissed off about withdrawal from Algeria in 1962. And people say Britain hasn’t come to terms with the imperial past.)

Hence, no doubt, Le Pen’s stumping of the ‘hoods. It’s interesting that he has considerable support among the immigrants he railed against at the start of his career, but it’s observable that the FN is struggling to get off the back of the demographic drag curve. Presumably, Le Pen’s active life represents the remaining length of the runway—

In the short term, of course, he has to fend off the danger of being “Marchaised” by Nicolas Sarkozy—in 1981, the Socialists invited Georges Marchais’ Communists into a coalition, where they proceeded to nab much of their support. In the longer term, the chief challenge is to replace enough codgers to ensure a presence.

French Presidential Debate Notes

Posted on by
4

Style is clearly more important than substance in Presidential debates. Unfortunately, after 45 minutes of speaking time for each candidate, I was, quite frankly, very disappointed on both accounts. Neither Ségolène Royal nor Nicolas Sarkozy were able to present coherent arguments of their respective programmes. Instead, they kept constantly interrupting each other, Royal more so than Sarkozy, kept losing discourse threads (sometimes even without being interrupted) in pointless debates about specific figures or jumped from one point to another. Sarkozy may have been a little more concise on the economic parts (taxes, pensions, labour market regulation, welfare) of the debate, but he certainly did not “win” that debate by any stretch of imagination.
Continue reading →

French Presidential debate broadcast online

Posted on by
1

If the weather in France is even remotely as warm and sunny as it is here in South-West Germany today, I have doubts tonight’s televised debate between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy will be able to get 86% turnout yet again. Still, if you would like to tune in to the debate, but you don’t receive French tv (or even speak French) there are a couple of options available.

ARTE.tv broadcasts the event live in both French and German, while France 24 will offer interactive coverage as well as tv-streams (wmv9, 400 kpbs) in English, French, and Arabic (links via wwitv.com).

French presidential election: brief comments

Posted on by
9

8:40: Sarko and Ségo in the second round then. Which means two important things. Firstly, someone at work owes me a coffee (I really should have bet for something more pricey). Secondly, the election that had been billed by some pundits as one of the most inpredictible ever has delivered very predictible results indeed: the two candidates that were ahead in the polls since the beginning get through to the runoff; the Bayrou insurgency receded in the late campaign, just like the polls were showing; and all the minor candidates were crushed, with the Communist and Green parties looking DOA now. The only half-surprise is the (relative) crash of the extreme right: but it is a surprise only because many thought Le Pen would get a big result, against what most of the polls were predicting. I sense the always-reviled pollsters will have a field day tonight.

Update by Alex: Libé carried time-series graphs for all the pollsters on Friday, and one of the striking things was that Le Pen had gained no more than 1 per cent or so over the campaign, whichever poll you looked at.

8:50 (Emmanuel) : there’s no denying that Sarkozy is looking good now. Not only is he ahead by a significant margin, but Royal does not have significant reserves of votes to tap into for the second round (the total of all left-wing candidates is around 36%). Much will depend on François Bayrou’s attitude in the next days but even if (a really big “if”) he calls his voters to support Royal, it remains doubtful that they’ll follow him.

9:10 (Emmanuel) : The much-awaited Bayrou is speaking. Begins with that worn-out platitude: “French politics will never be the same”. Big score despite negative media, polls and pundits. Strongly criticizes the two main parties. Hints that “decisions” will be taken in the next days.

9:20 (Emmanuel) : Official CW about Bayrou is that he won’t support Sarkozy and that he can’t support Royal (because UDF MPs clearly need the support of the UMP to be reelected in June). Hence his pox-in-both-your-houses attitude. One striking thing nonetheless: all the left-wing candidates have been falling over themselves to give their support to Royal (even the famously intransigent Laguiller); so far, no candidate has called to vote for Sarkozy.

9:47 (Alex) : Royal making incredibly long, incredibly lacklustre speech. Bayrou was bad enough but this is dire. You wouldn’t think this was one of the highest scores for a Socialist in the first round ever.

9:50 (Emmanuel) : Damn. Alex just wrote exactly what I was thinking. When you hear Segolène speaking, you always wonder how she managed to go that far. Really unispiring stuff.

10:00 (Alex) : Le Pen is gradually sinking with each update of the polls. He’s now below the lowest estimate of his score at the beginning of the campaign. And the Communists have done very badly in places like Ariége..

10:05 (Alex) : Thierry Maillet says it’s 1981 over again. Giscard got 28.3 per cent, Mitterand 25.9, Chirac 18, and Georges Marchais of the PCF 15. 2007==(Giscard:Sarkozy, Mitterand:Royal, Chirac:Bayrou, Marchais:Le Pen)? Perhaps. Maillet points out that many of the voters who left the PCF moved to the FN.

10:14 (Alex): It’s worth pointing out that so far, the départements that are reporting are very few, and most are overseas territories. As Libé’s front-page Flash map points out, the masses are yet to engage. Meanwhile, gurks! Eric Besson, the PS national secretary who walked out of Ségoléne Royal’s economic team, has announced that he’s supporting Sarkozy.

10:15 (Tobias) – coverage of international online coverage – the BBC duly notes the high turnout and realizses that “France opts for a left-right battle.” The BBC’s political correspondent Jonathan Marcus also states that

“Whoever finally wins the presidency, … it will mark a change of political generation and perhaps a shift in French international priorities, making this election matter even to those outside France.”

Quite right. The NY Times enlists the help of the AP and also notes the generational change, as well as the gender dynamics in play -

“If the results confirm that, France will get its first president born after World War II after the May 6 final round. If she wins, Royal will become France’s first woman president.”

Wondering about Bayrou’s weak results, the newspaper reminds that one principal motivation for many voters was not to allow the participation of Le Pen in the second round. Germany’s conservative “Die Welt” mentions that Sarkozy’s move to the right paid off in the first round but questions whether it might not have the opposite effect in two weeks, mentioning the importance of the Bayrou vote, the majority of which seems willing to rally behind Royal to avoid Sarkozy – possibly without any official recommendation from the former candidate. Sarkozy will now have to move back to the center, but Die Welt doubts his efforts will be convincing following months of rather divisive campaigning.

For the liberal weekly Die Zeit’s “Blog Tricolore” (in German) Alain-Xavier Wurst” files a report from Royal’s headquarters and notes that the mood is getting better by the minute after they realised that this election will not be a repetition of the last one. He also explains that one winner of the current election wasn’t even on the polls – the telecommunications industry apparently expects as many text messages as after last year’s world cup final, that, for the first time in decades, Jaques Chirac must has voted for someone else – probably Ségolène Royal, and that there are about three million new voters, mostly young people, many of whom live in the Banlieues offended by Monsieur Sarkozy.

It will be very interesting to dissect today’s result in a little more detail. A regional breakdown will be available at the French interior ministry’s site – but at the moment, all results are still empty. Don’t forget it’s a Sunday…

10:15 (Emmanuel): first second-round poll. Sarko 54% – Ségo 46%. As anticipated, it really will be an uphill battle for the left-wing candidate.

10:25 (Alex): Or maybe not. More results are coming in, and the gap is closing – 29.6 vs 27.4, with Le Pen tanking under the 10 per cent mark. PS, Liberation has a regional results map on their front page.

10:50 (Emmanuel): A lot of interesting tidbits in the Ipsos exit poll (pdf). Like, for all the talk about the underwhelming result of Le Pen, the fact that he’s still first in the blue-collar demographic slice (“ouvriers“).

10:59 (Tobias): Nadine Morano explains on arte.tv that Sarkozy wants to convince pro-European voters by explaining that he was the only one who wants to go forward with a “mini-treaty” and avoid a second referendum on the constitution.

11:05 (Emmanuel): France Info radio reporting Sarkozy first in Paris, Seine-Saint-Denis (aka the place where all those cars were burnt in 2005) départements.

11:12 (Tobias): Daniel Cohn-Bendit believes that Bayrou was in the end beaten by the problem that the UDF feels the need/needs to cooperate with Sarkozy’s UMP in the parliamentary elections. That, according to Cohn-Bendit, essentially made Bayrou’s “third way” proposal a lot less credible. Interestingly, he also praises Sarkozy for his ability to pull Le Pen voters into the “normal” parliamentary spectrum.

11:15 (Emmanuel): Another second-round poll, this time from CSA. And another expected result: Sarkozy 53,5% – Royal 46,5%. Among the people who voted for Bayrou it’s: 16% unsure, 45% Royal, 39% Sarkozy.

11:35 (Emmanuel): And the WTF award of the day goes to unknown candidate Gérard Schivardi (dead-last with 0,4% of the vote) who declares: “I’m a happy man. This electoral base will allow me to create a new political party“.

11:55 (Emmanuel): Droite caviar? Sarko gets 73% in his own (posh) town of Neuilly, and 58% in the (posh) 8th arrondissement of Paris. Meanwhile, Royal barely comes out ahead in Bordeaux, a bit of a surprise since this is the town of ex-Prime minister and Sarkozy ally Alain Juppé.

12:05 (Alex): Droite ouvriére. Sarko just sneaks it in the Pas de Calais. Even there, where the biggest city is still Communist-run, the PCF gets only 3.4 per cent.

01:05 (Emmanuel): well, the bottle of wine is empty now and the official results are still not coming, so just a last comment to say that I fully agree with Pascal Riché’s analysis: based on the first round results, Ségolène Royal really has an impossible equation to solve, considering that the total of left-wing votes and one half of Bayrou’s total still left her at something like 45%. Adding to that the fact that Sarkozy is a much better debater than she is, and it’s hard to be very optimistic right now if you’re a left-wing voter (which, I hasten to add, I am). But, as they say, one week is a long time in politics. And she has two. But she better get started now.

Oh, and a warm welcome to our soon-to-be-there 1,000,000th Afoe visitor.