It's Chirac, stupid

France after the referendum

Jun 2nd 2005
From The Economist print edition

France's president has wasted ten years, devoted mainly to a search for scapegoats

UNDER France's fifth republic, prime ministers have come to serve a useful purpose for presidents: when the going gets tough, they get both the blame and the boot. Georges Pompidou got rid of Jacques Chaban-Delmas; François Mitterrand kicked out Pierre Mauroy, Michel Rocard and Edith Cresson. Sure enough, after the crushing French rejection of the European Union constitution in a referendum on May 29th, President Jacques Chirac turfed out Jean-Pierre Raffarin and appointed Dominique de Villepin, one-time foreign minister and unelected former diplomat, promising a “new impetus” from his government. Having heard France's message, he said in a television broadcast, “I intend to respond.” The trouble is that the selection of an elite technocrat is not a meaningful response to that message. For the ultimate responsibility for the political upset this week belongs not to the hapless Mr Raffarin, but to Mr Chirac himself.

The French had many reasons to reject the constitution, but underlying their defiance was a simple point: times are hard, jobs are scarce, nothing changes, promises go unkept, we are fed up, and you—the political class—refuse to listen. After ten years as president, Mr Chirac has received this message more than once. He received it in 1997, when he called an early parliamentary election and lost, landing himself with a Socialist government. He received it in 2002, when the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen made it into the presidential run-off. He received it in 2004, when the left swept the board at regional and European elections. Now, he has received it once again.

Leaders can respond to such discontent in two ways. One is to pretend that the French social model is still valid, that no trade-off exists between social protection and economic growth, that France can close the shutters and shelter from global capitalism, that all the blame belongs with outside forces—whether globalisation, America or Brussels. The other is to admit that France cannot isolate itself from the world economy, to explain that new markets are an opportunity for French companies, that job losses in manufacturing can be balanced by job creation in services and that inflexible social protection deters the creation of new jobs.

At almost every turn, Mr Chirac has chosen the first response. His one bold attempt at economic reform, under Alain Juppé in 1995, ended in failure when he backed down after the country was paralysed by strikes. Since then, rather than confronting the populist arguments of the anti-globalisation lobby, Mr Chirac has drifted to the left with public opinion. During the referendum campaign, he was at it again, promising that the constitution would entrench the French social model and protect it from “Anglo-Saxon liberalism”. His choice of Mr de Villepin, the aristocratic product of elite technocratic training and the embodiment of everything the French have just rejected, runs true to form. Mr Chirac was first elected president in 1995, pledging that “jobs will be my preoccupation at all times”. Since then, unemployment has barely moved: from 11.3% then to 10.2% today.

At this time of morosité, it is easy to forget that France has so much going for it. Government policy may stop its top companies from creating many jobs, but they know how to make and sell the world such products as lipstick, rubber tyres, cars, handbags and insurance. There is no reason why the country should not halve its unemployment rate by deregulating the labour market—if the political will existed to take on the unions. Yet Mr de Villepin, who has never held an economic portfolio and recently called for a more socially minded programme, is unlikely to be any bolder than his predecessors.

You have delighted us long enough

The source of France's troubles is not Europe, nor global capitalism, nor rebellious socialists, nor the far-right, nor the far-left. It is Mr Chirac. His failure to be straight with the French about the need for reform has come back to haunt him. That is why a better response would have been for Mr Chirac to follow the example set by Charles de Gaulle after he lost a referendum in 1969: to accept his responsibility and resign.

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.