Chirac’s debacle is also a story of broader confusion. For a generation now, continental Europe has been stuck in a pattern of stagnant growth and mounting unemployment. Yet by world standards, Europeans have led lives of luxurious security, and they don’t want to give that up. The French system assures voters everything from lifetime health care to five-week vacations, even subsidized meals in their local bistros. In France there is such a thing as a free lunch, or so it has seemed.
It couldn’t last, of course. While the French were dining out on their government’s credit, other countries got lean and mean. French business became less competitive. Now the government has to cut welfare spending; if France wants to be included in the single European currency, the euro, it must sharply reduce the budget deficit. The challenge for French leaders has been to convince their people that better times are coming - or would be, if only they’d sacrifice.
Chirac and his prime minister, Alain Juppe, wanted to transform the French system: cut back government spending, reduce taxes, make it easier for businesses to fire employees. This is standard practice in the United States, Britain and other countries where unemployment rates are in single digits. But to many French workers it sounds entirely too ““Anglo-Saxon.’’ And as unemployment has climbed to 12.8 percent, workers have clung to their benefits like smokers clutching their last cigarette.
So French politicians deluded the people, and possibly themselves. Some Socialists want to reduce unemployment by cutting the workweek from 39 hours to 35 - for the same weekly pay - on the theory that businesses would have to hire more people to get the work done. Philippe Seguin, the leading populist in Chirac’s coalition (and a possible successor to Juppe), has suggested doing away with electronic ticket-takers in the subway and self-service pumps at gas stations so that people can have those jobs.
‘Convergence criteria’: Chirac won the 1995 presidential elections talking about healing the rift between rich and poor in France. He seemed to regard the government as protector and provider, and the electorate liked that. But once in office, Chirac and Juppe called for austerity and sacrifice. Cloaking their policy in near-impenetrable Eurospeak, they said it was imperative to meet the ““convergence criteria’’ for the euro. It didn’t work. ““We tried to do too many things in too short a period,’’ Juppe told NEWSWEEK. ““But I think we have done a good job.’'
The people didn’t. When Chirac dissolved Parliament on April 21, the polls already showed he had everything to lose. In the first round, almost 70 percent of the electorate voted against him. ““I understood your message,’’ Chirac said later. But whether a government run by his party, or any other, has an answer the French will accept is still an open question.
