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The irresistible rise of Ségolène Royal

Jun 8th 2006 | PARIS

From The Economist print edition

A flexible and popular candidate meets an immovable and less popular party

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WHEN Britain's Labour Party chose Tony Blair as leader in 1994, left-wingers held their noses. Despite their distaste, he felt fresh, looked good and was popular enough to offer Labour its best chance of regaining power after 15 years in the wilderness. In France, where the Socialist Party has not had the presidency for 11 years, and an election is due next spring, a similar hunger has taken hold. The difference is that party grandees are putting up stiff resistance to the candidate who feels fresh, looks good and has conquered public opinion: Ségolène Royal.

When Ms Royal first hinted at her presidential ambitions nine months ago in Paris-Match, Socialist old-timers responded with scorn. “Who will look after the children?” sneered Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, of this mother of four. Others pointed to her lack of heavyweight experience—she has served only in “soft” ministries such as education and the family. But the more she was dismissed, the more the public took to her. In a poll for Libération this week, 68% of Socialist voters said they wanted her as their presidential candidate, against 27% for the next choice, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Until recently, Ms Royal's strategy has been to say as little as possible, avoid policy questions, and watch her poll numbers climb. At last autumn's party conference, she sat silently as party elders tramped to the platform to pontificate, confiding shortly afterwards that her discretion was “deliberate”. Timing, she said, was all.

Over the past week, however, Ms Royal has kicked up a stink among the Socialist old guard. First, this daughter of an army colonel argued for a clamp-down on teenage criminals, calling for first-time offenders to be sent to boot camp, and for parents of delinquents to be dispatched to parenting school and have their benefits reviewed. Hardly had the outcry died away before she broke another taboo, the 35-hour week, introduced by a previous Socialist government. This time, she veered leftwards. Her criticism was not that it stifled the work ethic or burdened companies, but that it had bred too much insecurity: bosses had won flexible working practices in return for reducing the working week with no loss of pay. “Managers have benefited from extra days off and workers have had to work on Saturdays,” she wrote on her website (she is compiling a book based on online contributions).

At first glance, she seems guilty of ideological incoherence. In one breath, she criticises—however counter-intuitively—the 35-hour week for being too liberal; in another, she praises Mr Blair's employment record. Her web chapter, “The disorder of jobs and work”, is hardly a Blairite manifesto, denouncing “a globalised hyper-class” and its belief in the “all-powerful and all-beneficent market”. This week, Ms Royal stressed that she still supported the 35-hour week in principle. “I am a Socialist,” she declared, in case of doubt.

Within the party, her outbursts have caused consternation. “With the ideas she is developing today, she is cutting the party in two,” Claude Allègre, a former education minister, told Le Parisien. Even François Hollande, the party leader and Ms Royal's “partner”, said that he did not agree with all her ideas. A disciplined party that functions through committees and consensus, it has not taken well to her blog-led quest for new thinking, or to her unilateral outspokenness. This week, the Socialists finalised an electoral programme that situates the party firmly to the left, calling for a big rise in the minimum wage, for renationalisation of the electricity utility, and for extra taxes on companies that distribute profits as dividends rather than re-investing them.

Yet it may be that Ms Royal is on to a rather smarter approach. She is pursuing a strategy of brand differentiation: entrenching her image among the electorate, which is tired of the stale grey political class, as fresh and innovative. She even talks of “ségolisme”. Coherence matters less than distinctiveness. In this, she resembles Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading right-wing contender, who has built his image as a straight-talking, combative risk-taker. He joked this week that she “would make an acceptable candidate for the right”.

Although her security hard-talk provoked much liberal hand-wringing in Paris, it drew applause at a meeting in northern France. A poll in Le Figaro suggested that 66% of the French agreed with her. Many left-leaning voters are fed up with the party's soft approach, which often excuses criminality. Moreover, fears about security are feeding the far right. In one poll, a staggering 31% of voters say they want the National Front's Jean-Marie Le Pen to stand for the presidency.

A second element in Ms Royal's strategy is to use her poll ratings to conquer the party, where she lacks a base. A new opinion poll by TNS-Sofres shows her to be France's most popular politician, fully ten points ahead of Mr Sarkozy, and the only candidate on the left who would beat him in a run-off. Thanks to an internet membership drive, the Socialist Party has expanded to over 200,000 members, a jump of almost 60% since March. An internal poll shows that many newcomers have neither belonged to a party before nor set foot in a Socialist meeting. Yet all those registered by June 1st will help to choose the presidential candidate in November. They could be just the sort who are drawn to the novelty and sense of renewal that Ms Royal seems to embody.

All the same, leading Socialists expect Ms Royal to trip up. Their rancour is breathtaking. Many consider her a media creation just waiting to implode. “The media is not interested in competence,” laments one, “only in a beauty contest.” One fear is that the party might pick her as a candidate—only for her to tumble afterwards, wrecking the left's chances next spring. According to one insider, her rival candidates are working towards an informal pact to back each other in the run-off for the party's nomination, in a bid to thwart Ms Royal. Some are even muttering about bringing back Lionel Jospin, a retired former prime minister.

If the presidential election were held tomorrow, “Ségo” and “Sarko” would cruise to the second round. Under the fifth republic, however, no poll has correctly forecast the two run-off candidates a year in advance. In 1994, for example, Mr Chirac languished way behind Edouard Balladur, a rival on the centre-right, and yet he won the presidency a year later. In 2002, Mr Jospin was expected to coast into the run-off. Instead, Mr Chirac defeated Mr Le Pen. It would be foolish to bet on Ms Royal now—but just as foolish to write her off.

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Rocking the boat of French socialism

By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune

TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 2006

PARIS Are French voters more prepared for change than the parties claiming to represent them?

That could be one interpretation of the saga of Ségolène Royal, who is determined to represent the Socialists in next year's presidential elections and has been rising ever higher in the polls over the past six months.

She caused outrage across the left, including in her own Socialist Party, when last week she proposed surprisingly tough measures to deal with young offenders, but a poll Monday indicated that a vast majority of the French agreed with her.

She has repeatedly expressed admiration for Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, but the fact that he is considered a defector from leftist ideals by many inside her party has done nothing to curb her popularity.

And on Monday, as if to prove her refusal to be deterred by party taboos, she published a harsh critique of the 35- hour workweek on her blog. The shortened workweek was the flagship Socialist reform of the last decade and its extension is part of a preliminary party program for the 2007 poll.

Eleven months before an election that many inside and outside of France see as a test of whether Europe's third- largest economy is ready to embrace far-reaching economic reforms, Royal's popularity has prompted some to suggest that French politics could be undergoing a major shift.

Unlike common practice in French party politics, "Ségolène Royal's strategy is to win the battle of public opinion before the battle inside her own party," said Pierre Giacometti, research director at the Ipsos polling institute. "She believes that her party can only win if its candidate appeals to your average person on the street."

For months, Royal was patronized by party insiders for politicking without a program and for spending much of her time in her campaign headquarters - monitoring an interactive site where thousands of voters have registered their concerns and ideas.

Her recent comments have prompted several of the male contenders in her own camp to distance themselves from her proposals - even the party chief, François Hollande, her partner and father of their four children, criticized some of her ideas. But her poll ratings suggest that her strategy has paid off so far: Some recent surveys suggest that she would even beat Nicolas Sarkozy, the head of the governing Gaullist party, if the presidential election took place now.

Few have so far compared her to prominent center-left reformers in other Western countries, like Blair or Bill Clinton in the United States, who each replaced a traditional leftist approach with economic pragmatism. But some parallels can already be drawn. Like the "war on crime" Clinton promised in his 1992 election campaign or Blair's 1997 election slogan, "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime," Royal's proposals on law and order wade deep into the right's traditional territory.

Following renewed unrest in immigrant suburbs outside Paris last week, she proposed to enroll first-time young offenders into community service programs run by the military to teach them discipline and citizenship.

She also wants parents of troublemaking children to attend "parenting schools" and proposes to freeze child benefits in case unruly offspring cause trouble.

A poll conducted by Ipsos and published in Le Monde on Monday, indicated that 69 percent of respondents agreed with her proposal on the military programs for young offenders and 55 percent backed her idea about parenting schools and child benefits.

Even among Socialist voters, 67 percent agreed on the military program and 50 percent on parenting schools and benefits.

But 48 percent of Socialist voters said they believed she was distancing herself from leftist values.

Such a strategy helped Clinton and Blair to rid their parties of a reputation for being soft on crime.

The suburban riots in France last year raised concern about law and order, and Royal's proposals could make it harder for the right to attack her party on the issue.

But there are also risks, Giacometti said, arguing that making crime an issue could play into the center-right's hand - and make Royal vulnerable to criticism from rivals in her own camp.

"Paradoxically, these results also strengthen Nicolas Sarkozy," Giacometti said. Sarkozy, who as interior minister owes much of his own popularity to his tough stand for law and order, can use her comments to deflect future leftist criticism of his own policies.

The Ipsos poll indicated that 52 percent of the French trust Sarkozy most with solving crime-related problems in the coming years, compared with 29 percent who say they have most confidence in Royal.

Meanwhile, Royal's rivals may exploit the fact that far-right voters are the biggest fans of her proposals on unruly youths as proof that her ideas are not true to leftist values.

In the same poll, 81 percent of voters of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front said they liked Royal's suggestion on military camps.

But as the political campaign advances, the main test of Royal's ability to lure voters and her willingness to reform will be her stance on reforming France's rigid labor market.

While criticizing the 35-hour workweek for hurting low-income employees, especially women, Royal has yet to voice her strategy for creating jobs and fighting France's high rate of unemployment.

Law and order matters to voters, but as all polls emphasize, joblessness remains at the top of the list of concerns.

PARIS Are French voters more prepared for change than the parties claiming to represent them?

That could be one interpretation of the saga of Ségolène Royal, who is determined to represent the Socialists in next year's presidential elections and has been rising ever higher in the polls over the past six months.

She caused outrage across the left, including in her own Socialist Party, when last week she proposed surprisingly tough measures to deal with young offenders, but a poll Monday indicated that a vast majority of the French agreed with her.

She has repeatedly expressed admiration for Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, but the fact that he is considered a defector from leftist ideals by many inside her party has done nothing to curb her popularity.

And on Monday, as if to prove her refusal to be deterred by party taboos, she published a harsh critique of the 35- hour workweek on her blog. The shortened workweek was the flagship Socialist reform of the last decade and its extension is part of a preliminary party program for the 2007 poll.

Eleven months before an election that many inside and outside of France see as a test of whether Europe's third- largest economy is ready to embrace far-reaching economic reforms, Royal's popularity has prompted some to suggest that French politics could be undergoing a major shift.

Unlike common practice in French party politics, "Ségolène Royal's strategy is to win the battle of public opinion before the battle inside her own party," said Pierre Giacometti, research director at the Ipsos polling institute. "She believes that her party can only win if its candidate appeals to your average person on the street."

For months, Royal was patronized by party insiders for politicking without a program and for spending much of her time in her campaign headquarters - monitoring an interactive site where thousands of voters have registered their concerns and ideas.

Her recent comments have prompted several of the male contenders in her own camp to distance themselves from her proposals - even the party chief, François Hollande, her partner and father of their four children, criticized some of her ideas. But her poll ratings suggest that her strategy has paid off so far: Some recent surveys suggest that she would even beat Nicolas Sarkozy, the head of the governing Gaullist party, if the presidential election took place now.

Few have so far compared her to prominent center-left reformers in other Western countries, like Blair or Bill Clinton in the United States, who each replaced a traditional leftist approach with economic pragmatism. But some parallels can already be drawn. Like the "war on crime" Clinton promised in his 1992 election campaign or Blair's 1997 election slogan, "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime," Royal's proposals on law and order wade deep into the right's traditional territory.

Following renewed unrest in immigrant suburbs outside Paris last week, she proposed to enroll first-time young offenders into community service programs run by the military to teach them discipline and citizenship.

She also wants parents of troublemaking children to attend "parenting schools" and proposes to freeze child benefits in case unruly offspring cause trouble.

A poll conducted by Ipsos and published in Le Monde on Monday, indicated that 69 percent of respondents agreed with her proposal on the military programs for young offenders and 55 percent backed her idea about parenting schools and child benefits.

Even among Socialist voters, 67 percent agreed on the military program and 50 percent on parenting schools and benefits.

But 48 percent of Socialist voters said they believed she was distancing herself from leftist values.

Such a strategy helped Clinton and Blair to rid their parties of a reputation for being soft on crime.

The suburban riots in France last year raised concern about law and order, and Royal's proposals could make it harder for the right to attack her party on the issue.

But there are also risks, Giacometti said, arguing that making crime an issue could play into the center-right's hand - and make Royal vulnerable to criticism from rivals in her own camp.

"Paradoxically, these results also strengthen Nicolas Sarkozy," Giacometti said. Sarkozy, who as interior minister owes much of his own popularity to his tough stand for law and order, can use her comments to deflect future leftist criticism of his own policies.

The Ipsos poll indicated that 52 percent of the French trust Sarkozy most with solving crime-related problems in the coming years, compared with 29 percent who say they have most confidence in Royal.

Meanwhile, Royal's rivals may exploit the fact that far-right voters are the biggest fans of her proposals on unruly youths as proof that her ideas are not true to leftist values.

In the same poll, 81 percent of voters of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front said they liked Royal's suggestion on military camps.

But as the political campaign advances, the main test of Royal's ability to lure voters and her willingness to reform will be her stance on reforming France's rigid labor market.

While criticizing the 35-hour workweek for hurting low-income employees, especially women, Royal has yet to voice her strategy for creating jobs and fighting France's high rate of unemployment.

Law and order matters to voters, but as all polls emphasize, joblessness remains at the top of the list of concerns.

June 06, 2006

France Readies For Change ?

Segosarko Something interesting is happening on the long stagnant French political scene. A sense of excitement has even started to infect the most gloomy observers. I was talking to Jacques Marseille, a professor of economic history at the Sorbonne whose books have for years been offering a bleak diagnosis of the French malaise. Last night, over a beer in his local cafe by the Boulevard Saint Michel, he was almost lyrical with optimism. "I get the feeling that the machine for changing the country has started up," he said.

The cause of Marseille's good mood was the race for the presidential elections that are still 11 months away. After a year of turmoil, including rejection of the European Constitution, immigrant riots and a student revolt, the stage has been taken over in the past two months by two duelling stars -- Ségolène Royal for the left and Nicolas Sarkozy for the right. France may be offered the choice of two candidates who are both promising a break with the sclerotic past, noted Marseille, whose latest book is called The Correct Use of the Civil War in France. (Du bon usage de la guerre civile en France)

We are not there yet, by any means. The barons of the Socialist party are wailing over the antics of Royal, who has been the darling of the media and the opinion polls for the past nine months. She has eclipsed a batch of Socialist elder statesmen who believed that their time had come. As the party puts the finishing touches this week to its manifesto under François Hollande, its leader, Ségolène, the mother of his four children, has been driving a bulldozer through the party's dusty old dogma.

Sounding like Clinton or Blair, she has called for war on crime and yesterday she attacked the 35-hour working week-- the sacrosanct legacy of the last Socialist Government (today's Times). Both positions have earned her huge public support, according to polls, and the outrage of rivals who are accusing her of trashing the Socialist heritage. The party faithful who vote for the nomination in November are far from convinced that they should back Royal, 52.

Meanwhile, with the political destruction of Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, this spring has enabled Sarkozy to emerge as the unquestioned champion of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which he took over from President Chirac's control last year. It seems certain that the very popular Sarko, will lead the centre-right camp into the elections next April at the age of 52.

Both Ségo and Sarko are establishment figures with two decades in high politics behind them. They are no revolutionaries, but they are both iconoclasts who want to modernise the country. Opinion polls show both to be by far the most popular among voters in their respective camps. Marseille said that he had been taken aback by the speed with which the pair had been embraced by France. "Until March we thought that Chirac might even stand again and de Villepin was offering to shore up the French social model in opposition to Sarkozy. After his defeat by the students there was something of a realisation in France that things had to change. Now we see Ségolène talking about sending the army into the housing estates. This country really is waiting for change," he said.

"Maybe we are going to have a choice between an authoritarian father and a softer mother-figure, but it will be the same thing: the arrival of a bit of common sense," said Marseille. "That is all that it will need to do the reforms -- to the education system, the labour market, the state institutions which have broken down, cutting public spending. It will be a revolution of common sense."

This may be a false dawn. If Royal's star wanes, she will be replaced by a more orthodox leftist. On the far right, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front could upset the two-round election again as he did in 2002.

I know that readers may point out that Jacques Marseille is suspect to the mainstream because he is seen as one of the leading apostles of declinology -- the school of writers who have made their names lamenting France's ills. In my view that makes his sudden optimism all the more worthy of note. He is also far from alone in noticing that something is stirring in France.

Posted by Charles Bremner on June 06, 2006 at 12:03 PM in France, Politics | Permalink

Features

A Royal in the Palais?;Segolene Royal;Profile;The face;Tuesday

Charles Bremner

465 words

6 June 2006

The Times

Times2 2

English

(c) 2006 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved

You have to pity the half-dozen Frenchmen who believe that they are destined to lead the Socialist Party into next spring's elections and succeed Jacques Chirac at the Elysee Palace: nothing they do gets them out of the shadow of Segolene Royal.

It was not meant to be this way. Sego, as the 52-year-old Socialist is known, was seen as a lightweight whose fame came from stints as a junior minister and her partnership with Francois Hollande, the party chief and father of her four children. Royal has been in high-level politics since the 1980s, first serving as an adviser to the late President Mitterrand, then as MP for a rural constituency.

But the party bosses always deemed her off-message and a little flighty, with her back-to-basics ideas for the family. She was supposed to be no match for party barons such as Laurent Fabius and Lionel Jospin, former prime ministers who believe that their time has come. But the colonel's daughter with the strait laced Catholic air has transformed herself and outmanoeuvred them all. She won the presidency of Poitou-Charentes in 2004, becoming the first female boss of a French region. She has won over left-wing and centrist voters with a charm that enrages her rivals and is unsettling Hollande, who believed that nine years as party leader entitled him, not his partner, to a shot at the presidency.

Despite 25 years at the top, Royal -a stylish woman who looks far younger than her age -has cast herself as a newcomer from outside the party apparatus. She has a disconcerting candour but, until this month, had avoided defining her ideas beyond expressing admiration for Tony Blair, a heresy in French Socialist eyes.

Now she has jumped into two minefields. First, she took a leaf out of the book of Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative presidential contender, and called for the military to be used to re-educate the delinquent youths of the housing estates.

Then she attacked the 35-hour week, a legacy of the last Socialist Government, dismissing it as damaging to workers and to France.

The gloves are now off as her rivals try to remove her halo in the run-up to voting for the Socialist candidacy next autumn. Royal is gambling that her popularity with the public will prompt reluctant party activists to nominate her as the Socialist because she seems to have the best chance of restoring the Left to the Elysee. Her rivals believe that the "Segolene bubble" will burst before the autumn if only they can expose her as the stealth conservative they believe her to be.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2006

LEADER

Segolene's iconoclasm Socialist frontrunner has hit out at 35-hour working week.

517 words

6 June 2006

Financial Times

London Ed1

Page 16

English

(c) 2006 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved

Presidental candidates in France need to reach out beyond their own party. So it is no great surprise that Segolene Royal, the socialist frontrunnner for next year's presidential election, should have decided to take a swing at the introduction of the 35-hour working week, her party's flagship measure when it was last in government. But it is startling that she should have attacked it not from the centre, where Ms Royal had seemed to position much of the rest of her campaign, but from the left.

In a policy statement posted on her website yesterday when half the country was on holiday, Ms Royal criticises the 35-hour measure, not for the failed make-work scheme that it is, but for the manner in which employers have used it to press workers to be more flexible in other ways, such as agreeing to annualise their hours. For the Financial Times, this ancillary flexibility was a side-effect of a law that was otherwise erroneously based on the "lump of labour" fallacy - the idea of there being only a given amount of available work that needed cutting into smaller slices to provide the unemployed with jobs. But Ms Royal claims that, quite apart from the issue of job creation, the law has made it far harder for the low-skilled to make ends meet. Textile workers, for example, have been able to reduce their working week by only one and a half, not the planned four, hours from the previous 39-hour norm. Subsequent centre-right governments have tinkered with the law, but only to give it a bit more of the flexibility of which Ms Royal disapproves.

At all events, Ms Royal is becoming increasingly hard to categorise on the traditional left-right spectrum. For in response to a recent flare-up of social trouble in the Paris suburbs, she suggested that incipient hooligans should be inducted into the army and taught a trade. This suggestion, born presumably of her own experience as an officer's daughter, brought a rebuke from Francois Hollande, her partner and the father of her four children, who happens to be the top official of the Socialist party. Ms Royal has also incurred the wrath of some party leftwingers for her praise of Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, for his view on youth employment and public services. Yesterday's policy statement also included a "Blairite" rebuke of Prime minister Dominique de Villepin's "economic patriotism" - but again, not because it was protectionist, but because it was being used as a smokescreen to privatise Gaz de France.

This lack of a coherent policy platform is something that will be exploited by Ms Royal's many rivals inside the Socialist party, and eventually by her formal political enemies, led by Nicolas Sarkozy, the right's probable presidential standard-bearer next year. Equally, however, the policy eclecticism of the photogenic Ms Royal might serve her well, by making her an impossible target to pin down.

20060606L116.056

FT.com site : European Comment: France's Ancien Regime wanes.

Paul Betts

825 words

6 June 2006

Financial Times (FT.Com)

English

(c) 2006 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved

Some strange but encouraging things are happening in the normally cosy world of French business and politics.

Take the Vinci affair. Contrary to all expectations, the board of the construction and concessions company ousted last week its long-serving and extremely successful boss, Antoine Zacharias, because he was unable to let go of the reins of power once he moved up to non-executive chairman.

In a remarkably swift palace coup (eight minutes, according to one board member), Mr Zacharias was voted out. The new chairman, former EU commissioner and diplomat Yves-Thibault de Silguy, has promised to reform the company's governance structure and address what was clearly seen as an obscene remuneration policy.

Under Mr Zacharias, Vinci not only became the world's leading construction and concessions group but its shares outperformed practically every other French blue-chip stock during the past few years. Yet his abuse of power no longer fitted the modern mood of the markets and of the French.

Despite, or rather as a result of, his unceremonious sacking, Vinci shares rallied strongly on the day, underlining the increasing weight investors are according to good governance in a country where cronyism is unfortunately still the norm, not the exception.

The Vinci case is now likely to have repercussions and make converts elsewhere in corporate France. Even the employers' confederation is openly admitting that there is a limit to executive greed.

Now take what is happening on the political front. Segolene Royal, who is increasingly looking like the new Joan of Arc, is shaking the Socialist party establishment by breaking one left-wing taboo after another. The voters are lapping it up and her popularity is rising by the day.

Her refusal to be hemmed in by old ideologies, whether they be on security or France's absurd 35-hour working week, is welcomed by a population showing signs of being more pragmatic than its leaders.

And not just on the left but on the right, too, iconoclasm is gaining ground. Nicolas Sarkozy is turning more and more into a high priest of rupture and thereby leading the polls for next year's presidential elections, with Ms Royal hot on his heels. At such an early stage in the race for the Elysee palace, it almost does not really matter who is ahead. But like the Vinci case it shows that a quiet revolution is taking place in France.

Voters want change. And the French establishment, which refuses to change and is discredited by scandals whether of the Vinci type or at the political level of Clearstream, risks real punishment - not so much in the courts but either at the hands of fellow directors and shareholders or at the polls.

Is the international aviation industry crying wolf too loudly over the menace of high oil prices on airline profits? This week Iata boss Giovanni Bisignani warned that airlines around the world faced a $112bn fuel bill this year and that the industry as a whole was expected to lose $3bn - the sixth consecutive year of losses. But these figures should not be taken at crude face value since the bulk of these losses are carried by US airlines. These are continuing to be penalised by a weakening dollar, pension liabilities, and cut-throat domestic competition.

Meanwhile, Asian and European carriers seem to be riding the tide. Big European carriers such as Air France-KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa have all seen their shares rise more than oil prices. They are also managing to stay in the black as they successfully pass on higher fuel costs to passengers who are continuing to fill their aircraft.

The strong euro is also helping, while cost-cutting and new management also appear to be working, even in the case of BA with its heavy pension liabilities. Indeed, the high fuel bill seems to have been a spur to greater efficiency and discipline. Should the price of oil eventually fall, these airlines can only benefit.

Enel has scored a small revenge over Gaz de France by snatching control of a Romanian utility coveted by the French group. The acquisition is some consolation for the Italian company's chief executive Fulvio Conti after failing to obtain part of the Suez empire following the proposed GdF-Suez merger.

Yet Mr Conti may not have lost all hope of securing the Belgian assets of Suez. The GdF-Suez merger is facing mounting difficulties, especially over the need to pass legislation in the French parliament to allow the deal to go ahead.

Dominique de Villepin, French prime minister, says he still plans to push through the necessary legislation before the summer. But union opposition and second thoughts among some members in France's centre-right ruling majority could persuade his weakened government to delay the timetable indefinitely. Mr Conti, after all, may well have the last laugh.

49399632

Features

A Royal in the Palais?;Segolene Royal;Profile;The face;Tuesday

Charles Bremner

465 words

6 June 2006

The Times

Times2 2

English

(c) 2006 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved

You have to pity the half-dozen Frenchmen who believe that they are destined to lead the Socialist Party into next spring's elections and succeed Jacques Chirac at the Elysee Palace: nothing they do gets them out of the shadow of Segolene Royal.

It was not meant to be this way. Sego, as the 52-year-old Socialist is known, was seen as a lightweight whose fame came from stints as a junior minister and her partnership with Francois Hollande, the party chief and father of her four children. Royal has been in high-level politics since the 1980s, first serving as an adviser to the late President Mitterrand, then as MP for a rural constituency.

But the party bosses always deemed her off-message and a little flighty, with her back-to-basics ideas for the family. She was supposed to be no match for party barons such as Laurent Fabius and Lionel Jospin, former prime ministers who believe that their time has come. But the colonel's daughter with the strait laced Catholic air has transformed herself and outmanoeuvred them all. She won the presidency of Poitou-Charentes in 2004, becoming the first female boss of a French region. She has won over left-wing and centrist voters with a charm that enrages her rivals and is unsettling Hollande, who believed that nine years as party leader entitled him, not his partner, to a shot at the presidency.

Despite 25 years at the top, Royal -a stylish woman who looks far younger than her age -has cast herself as a newcomer from outside the party apparatus. She has a disconcerting candour but, until this month, had avoided defining her ideas beyond expressing admiration for Tony Blair, a heresy in French Socialist eyes.

Now she has jumped into two minefields. First, she took a leaf out of the book of Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative presidential contender, and called for the military to be used to re-educate the delinquent youths of the housing estates.

Then she attacked the 35-hour week, a legacy of the last Socialist Government, dismissing it as damaging to workers and to France.

The gloves are now off as her rivals try to remove her halo in the run-up to voting for the Socialist candidacy next autumn. Royal is gambling that her popularity with the public will prompt reluctant party activists to nominate her as the Socialist because she seems to have the best chance of restoring the Left to the Elysee. Her rivals believe that the "Segolene bubble" will burst before the autumn if only they can expose her as the stealth conservative they believe her to be.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2006

Scrapped French holiday prompts chaos

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

Monday June 5, 2006

Guardian

They have more holiday time than people in almost any other country and many work a 35-hour week, but French workers are up in arms over the chaotic abolition of today's Pentecost bank holiday.

Until last year, Pentecost Monday was a public holiday. But the government said something had to be done to mark the 2003 heatwave that killed 15,000 people. Seizing on a national mood of soul-searching, it decided to scrap the bank holiday for four years. By sacrificing one day off a year, it said, workers could fund more carers for elderly and disabled people.

But the goodwill gesture has sparked chaos this year, with 60% of the population taking the day off and unions for those who have to clock in threatening to strike. The daily Libération ran a front-page headline calling it the "dumbest day" and business leaders have lampooned the government's bizarre decisions.

Government ministries, unemployment offices, post offices and some museums and shops are shut. But many employees in private firms have to go to work, despite the state rail network only running a holiday service. Last year, the SNCF rail network prompted both ridicule and fury when it announced it would keep the Pentecost holiday in return for its staff working an extra 112 seconds a day.

Some unions have called for strikes today, including those who represent Paris's public transport workers. Many parents who have to work have no childcare as state schools and nurseries are closed.

As on public holidays, haulage trucks are not allowed to use the roads today, so companies cannot make deliveries. "How can one tell businesses to work and at the same time ban transport by ministerial decree?" asked Laurence Parisot, the head of the Medef employers' federation.

Opposition politicians have attacked the scheme, saying low-income workers pay more than their fair share, and have urged the government to reverse tax cuts for middle-class families.

The former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who launched the plan to scrap the holiday, told Le Journal du Dimanche yesterday that it remained "both necessary and generous" and generated €2.2bn each year.

The proceeds have been earmarked until 2008 for hiring 15,000 nursing staff and creating 10,000 new places in retirement homes by 2007. Half the money will help people with disabilities.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

French stay home to snub Chirac's 'day of solidarity'

By Colin Randall in Paris

(Filed: 06/06/2006)

The French government was humiliated yesterday as its attempts to make people give up a bank holiday and work for nothing in a "day of solidarity" for the elderly and handicapped backfired.

Less than half the country was at work as millions of employees stayed off, treating the day as a normal Pentecost or Whit Monday.

Unions, industry and even retirement home directors accused President Jacques Chirac's ministers of creating confusion and resentment: some people were asked to work without pay and others given the day off in a complex series of arrangements.

The abolition of a popular national holiday was part of the government's response to the impact of the severe heatwave of 2003 which is believed to have caused the deaths of 15,000 old people in France.

The government said wages saved yesterday would raise about £1.5 billion, speeding the provision of additional places in homes for the handicapped and aged. It hoped to exploit a sense of national guilt after many elderly and infirm people died in the heat while their relatives - and ministers - were on holiday.

But the Left-leaning newspaper Libération called it the "dumbest day" while Jean-Claude Mailly, the general secretary of the Force Ouvrière union, denounced the initiative as "ham-fisted and hypocritical".

After a first attempt to cancel a bank holiday failed last year amid widespread strikes, ministers tried to win public support by introducing more flexibility.

Most public sector employees, and about half the workers in private industry, were given the day off after the government agreed that they could work unpaid shifts on some other date or take time off from existing entitlements.

The state rail company SNCF added a hint of farce by allowing staff to keep the holiday and instead work one minute and 52 seconds longer each day.

But with all schools and crèches closed, even parents willing to work were left with child care headaches. Public transport was patchy, with Saturday or Sunday services operating in Paris while stoppages in protest at the day of solidarity caused disruption in Lyons, Marseilles, Toulouse and other provincial cities.

Postal services were suspended and many doctors' surgeries were closed.

Despite appeals to industry to maintain production, heavy lorries were banned from the roads to avoid aggravating jams on what many people were still determined to treat as a long holiday weekend.

The employers' association, Medef, branded the government's policy "economically incoherent".

The prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, insisted during a visit to Finland that the day of solidarity was a bold and worthwhile "revolution" although he admitted that the arrangements left room for improvement.

But Pascal Champvert, the president of Adehpa, which represents retirement home directors, said that the extra resources raised yesterday would not compensate for 30 years of under-investment.

30 May 2006: Last laugh is on Chirac as his years of power end in a farce

7 August 2005: Don't waste time on holiday, we've got a country to fix, says French PM

4 September 2003: Unclaimed heatwave victims buried

Colin Randall's Paris blog

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

The Times June 05, 2006

Chirac's Bank Holiday ban is ignored as workers take the day off

From Adam Sage in Paris

THE collapse of President Chirac’s authority will be exposed today when most French people blithely ignore his decision to make Whit Monday a normal working day.

Although the Bank Holiday has been abolished officially, even state employees are refusing to work. Schools, post offices and museums will close for the day and the state railway network will be offering a reduced service.

As if to underline M Chirac’s declining power, his ministers have been unable to impose the reform on their own ministries, which are also stopping work. In the private sector nearly half of French businesses will be on holiday, while the rest will remain open.

Road haulage groups are particularly aggrieved. The Finance Ministry has told them to operate as usual, while the Transport Ministry has implemented Bank Holiday road safety measures, which involve the banning of lorries.

Jean-Michel Thénard, a columnist for the newspaper Libération, said that France was slipping into a “surrealist world” governed by M Chirac’s “absurd poetry”.

“Employees are going to go to work, but they are going to have to find someone to look after the children because the schools are shut, check which trains are running and refrain from posting letters,” he wrote.

The chaos stems from a government decision to levy a 0.3 per cent corporate tax to fund a €2 billion scheme to help the elderly and the disabled.The tax, introduced after the 2003 heatwave that killed almost 15,000 elderly people in France, was to be financed by a Day of Solidarity, an extra seven-hour working day, which the Government decided would be Whit Monday.

But the first Journée de Solidarité last year turned into a fiasco amid a nationwide wave of strikes and protests. Many workers said that they were in favour of solidarity, but not if it meant losing one of their 11 annual Bank Holidays.

Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, tried to calm the revolt by telling employees that they could put in the extra seven hours at any time during the year. In effect, Whit Monday has become an optional Bank Holiday to be negotiated between staff and management in each firm; a situation that even M de Villepin admits will produce “difficulties and perhaps even incoherence”.

He has achieved the remarkable feat of getting French unions to unite with their traditional enemy — the country’s employers — in opposing him.

Laurence Parisot, the chairwoman of the French Employers’ Federation, said: “How can you tell firms to work and then ban road transport?” François Chérèque, leader of the French Democratic Workers’ Federation, said: “There will be strikes in many firms and the strikes are right.”

The chaos is likely to inflict further damage on M Chirac, whose approval rating has plummeted to 17 per cent.

Attacked in the ghetto

Posted by Colin Randall at 02 Jun 06 19:04 in Crime, Paris, France

When I think of the deaths in Iraq of two courageous members of a TV film crew, and the maiming of the reporter, what happened to us in a bleak Parisian suburb fades to nothing.

Riot police during a night of unrest in Les Bosquets, Montfermeil, Paris

But then, what happened to me actually was nothing. It was the unfortunate photographer working with me who suffered. In the last few seconds of the couple of minutes we were apart, she was beaten to the ground, punched and kicked and robbed of her expensive camera and other possessions.

Lana Wong is a delightful American lady, born in New York to Hong Kong parents. Married to a Briton and living in Paris, she previously worked for five years in Africa.

Nothing happened to her in Africa to resemble her first encounter with danger in the French ghettoes. Mugged in broad daylight on the “nice” side of the street across from one of the tenements of Les Bosquets, a grim housing estate in Montfermeil.

Neighbours in the 5th arrondissement were aghast. “But you just don’t go to such places,” said one. And by and large, of course, the French - most French - don’t.

Montfermeil is only a short drive out of the centre of Paris. Under the heading “transportation”. Wikipedia says bluntly that there is none, or at any rate no Métro, no RER or surburban trains.

It is one of the places where trouble first erupted in last autumn’s rioting, after two boys were electrocuted in a power substation, apparently while running from police, in neighbouring Clichy-sous-Bois.

Lana and I went there to see the mayor, Xavier Lemoine, whose town hall and own home were besieged during the violence of Monday night. He’s the hardliner who tried to counter delinquency by banning teenagers from assembling in groups of more than three.

Anyone who has seen the gangs in action, or come across the results, recognises the problem, whatever differing solutions spring to mind.

One (white) taxi driver told us the present lawlessness was the product of years, maybe decades, of softly-softly policing in which no-go areas were created and all types of authority flouted.

He sounded like a man who might associate Singapore with namby-pamby liberalism, but said he’d settle for American-style zero tolerance and draconian police tactics.

Lana Wong

Lana Wong

Another cabbie (black, originally from Togo and now living in Clichy) made no excuses for the cowards who had assaulted Lana, but also spoke of the discontent fuelled by rampant racism in French society. “Look at the other taxis,” he said as we drove along the Left Bank quais. “You’ll be hard-pressed to see another black face among the drivers.”

In any event, Lana and I thought our duty as journalists required us to seek the views of not just the mayor but those living in Les Bosquets. I now hear - ironically, given Lemoine’s anti-gang policy (suspended after a legal challenge) - that one of the big news agencies stipulates that staff must work in groups of four in such areas, especially at night.

We were there in the afternoon. We had spoken to people, and Lana had taken photographs, in the dodgiest, most rundown tenement of the complex, all without incident or serious hint of menace.

On our way back to the town centre, Lana wanted – quite unnecessarily, on reflection, considering the images she already had - what photographers call general views, capturing the estate behind a nameplate or a sign urging drivers to look out for the 3,500 children living there.

All was calm. There were lots of cheerful enough Bonjours, no one seemed put out by our presence. Between us, we lowered our guard. I had a doctor’s prescription and there was a pharmacy. I went inside as Lana took one last picture. As she did so, some teenagers appeared at a distant doorway and shouted at her to stop. She was not seeking to photograph them but instantly obeyed, packing camera back into bag.

For some reason, she decided to wait outside the pharmacy rather than join me inside. Suddenly, two, maybe three youths pounced from behind. Before anyone in the shop knew what was happening, the attack was over. In her bag was the brand new – and uninsured - camera, a wallet containing cash and credit cards and, as she realised later to her horror, the keys to her flat.

After the chemist’s staff had patched up Lana, I left her in the safety of a taxi while searching for someone who might mediate with her muggers. It was a long shot; but a young man of north African origin offered to get the camera back - ”probably not the rest” – for 300 euros, including a cut for his troubles.

He claimed to know “ces petits noirs” who were her likely assailants, but only he could retrieve the gear.

If I’d had the money, I’d have taken the gamble for Lana’s sake. He seemed plausible, even if I guessed the chances of seeing him again, or the camera, wouldn’t be much higher than 10 or 15 per cent. But I’d been more cautious than Lana, and simply wasn’t carrying enough money to interest him. My cards were at home. Lana, by now, had nothing.

The police naturally discouraged any such idea. But one officer, acknowledging the slim prospects of their own inquiries leading very far, agreed that such methods, imperfect and wrong as they are, sometimes brought results.

Lana is left hobbling around her flat, poorer to the tune of more than 5,000 euros (only a small part can be claimed back out of the 1,200 euros she was charged for having her locks changed).

Both of us are angry with ourselves, me in particular for not being with her – however unthreatening things then seemed - when she was attacked. Or for not realising what was going on outside as I stood at the counter.

My presence would not necessarily have saved her possessions, and I am not especially brave or noble. But I am old-fashioned enough to wish that I had been there to take her beating.

Posted by Colin Randall at 02 Jun 06

FT.com site : France: Why their team is built around Zidane.

Simon Kuper

930 words

5 June 2006

Financial Times (FT.Com)

English

(c) 2006 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved

You could live in Paris and not know the World Cup was happening. In London half the shop displays and advertisements refer to football; not here.

Tickets for France's games in the Stade de France have been sold at discount, and the people who buy them often whistle their own players. And yet France might win the World Cup.

Les Bleus have rarely performed since the 1998-2000 era, when they won both the world and European championships.

At the 2002 World Cup they didn't even score, and they left Euro 2004 in the quarter-finals. To make things worse, Zinedine Zidane (pictured) then retired from the team.

France no longer had anyone with a splitting pass, and so defenders often resorted to punting balls long like English parks footballers of the early 1980s.

Finally, last August, Zidane announced that "a voice" had persuaded him to return to the team. What voice? Les guignols de l'info, French television's equivalent of Spitting Image, ran a reconstruction in which the voice speaks to "Zizou" as he lies in bed asleep, clad entirely in sponsors' gear.

The voice's owner turns out to be France's president Jacques Chirac. Zidane, still asleep, initially rebuffs his entreaties. Muttering the names of certain new Bleus, he says, "They're rubbish."

"Exactly," replies Chirac, who persuades Zidane that only his return can distract the French from the president's own troubles.

Zidane later revealed that in real life "the voice" had been his brother's. No matter: he returned, along with his fellow oldies Claude Makelele and Lilian Thuram. The presence of a man who hardly ever loses the ball soothed his teammates. France qualified for the World Cup.

But his return was not all good news. Zidane turns 34 on June 23. His decision to retire from football after the World Cup indicates that he thinks he is getting old.

The nation ignored his assessment. Perhaps it should have listened. Zidane is no longer quick enough to elude a marker with a step, and he is practically absolved of defensive duties, a rarity in modern football. The team could probably carry one old man, but France have several.

Their likely starting 11 at the World Cup has an average age of 30. The three men in the midfield's "engine room" - Zidane, Makelele and Patrick Vieira - average 32. None runs into space much. In this French team only Thierry Henry and Florent Malouda do. They are oddities in being under 30: France's famed youth academies haven't produced a regular international since 1998.

By the time France's defenders laboriously deliver each ball to Zidane, any element of surprise is lost.

The image of Euro 2004 was Zidane shuffling upfield practically on top of the ball, while opponents stood waiting for him to arrive. This year could be the same except that he is older.

France might instead have built their team around their other sublime player, Henry, who is 28 and in his prime. He is brilliant for Arsenal where the ball reaches him rapidly, while there is still space. He is rarely brilliant for France. Tellingly, in the more than 40 internationals he has played with Zidane, he has never yet received an assist from him.

But France built their team around Zidane, because they operate on the principle of seniority. The surviving world champions of 1998 are the "barons". Six of the 13 most capped players in French history could start this World Cup.

It is they who make the big decisions, not the coach, Raymond Domenech, who has in any case discredited himself with his faith in astrology (no Scorpios in this squad) and his inability to generate good football.

Some barons make a point of never mentioning Domenech's name in interviews. He concedes that his team is built "on the base of '98". Any player who wasn't there in 1998 is something of a second-class citizen.

The recent "affaire Coupet" nicely summed up some of the Bleus' problems. The squad was climbing a glacier during training camp in the Alps when Gregory Coupet, the reserve goalkeeper, had words with Domenech.

Soon afterwards Coupet's car drove out of camp. The keeper was soon persuaded back, but Domenech had to admit the rift publicly.

The affair was indicative. First, Coupet was angry because the place in goal had gone to Fabien Barthez, a hero of '98, who in the present (a rather less important period in the French footballing mind) has been outperformed by Coupet.

Second, the public, which is fed up with Domenech, backed Coupet. When Barthez was booked for time-wasting during the friendly against Mexico on May 27, the Parisian crowd applauded the punishment and chanted "Coupet!"

The fans are disaffected with this "team without a smile". Yet that Mexican match suggested a way back. In the second half the 23-year-old midfielder Franck Ribery made his international debut.

Ribery's technique is not impeccable, and he watched 1998 on television, yet against Mexico he stood out simply by running into space asking for the ball.

"A team can create itself during the tournament," Domenech has said. If France is to prosper, he may have to ditch a baron or two in Germany. One victim might be Vieira. He peaked years ago, and Makelele's presence may make him redundant.

Without Vieira, a fresher France boasting two geniuses might even repeat the march of 1998.

49371985

From the Los Angeles Times

WORLD CUP

Can Zidane be king of France again?

The hard-working, soccer-playing son of an Algerian immigrant could rock his country's world.

By Sebastian Rotella

SEBASTIAN ROTELLA is Times bureau chief in Paris.

June 4, 2006

ON THE NIGHT in 1998 when France conquered the world, an image of Zinedine Zidane flashed onto the Arc de Triomphe, which had been converted into a giant screen for the celebration of the country's World Cup victory.

The throngs surrounding the monument roared "Zidane president!"

Zidane, captain of the national team, grew up in a tough housing project in Marseilles. His father had emigrated from Algeria and worked as a night watchman. In a country in which the sons of North African immigrants are almost invisible in politics, the chant of the Parisian crowd was revolutionary. And the euphoria transcended sports.

Scoring two goals in the final against Brazil, Zidane led a harmonious squad of black, white and Arab Frenchmen that became a symbol of hope. During that jubilant July, this wary, stratified society embraced the "other France" — a fast-growing, downtrodden, predominantly Muslim population of foreign origin.

Zidane's exploits have helped both "pure" and immigrant French accept the idea of minorities as full citizens. Le Monde calls him "the leader of multiethnic France, of the France that loves its diversity."

Love and diversity have limits, however. During a game between France and Algeria here in October 2001, French youths of Arab origin booed "La Marseillaise" and chanted praise of Osama bin Laden. Then came the electoral triumph of Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right, anti-immigrant National Front in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections. Last year, immigrant slums erupted in rage and fire during nationwide youth riots.

But Zidane, 34, endures. Like a reluctant gunslinger accepting a last showdown, a beloved statesman returning from exile, he will play in this World Cup before he retires for good.

Once again, the story will be bigger than sports. Until 1998, the French middle class tended to snub soccer in favor of such genteel pastimes as tennis. The immigrant working class often rooted for teams from family homelands.

But Les Bleus, as the blue-shirted national squad is known, have united both worlds with the kind of passion that can topple rulers and start wars in wilder, less Cartesian countries.

Zidane's performance could help decide the survival of a French government endangered by unrest, scandal and economic crisis. Politicians long for a cup. The last one sent their popularity soaring. A bad showing in Germany will worsen the national malaise.

The man who incarnates French hopes has racked up trophies and superlatives as one of the world's top players, playing the last five years with star-studded Real Madrid. A midfielder with an elegant, brooding style, Zidane takes command of games with one-touch precision passes and intricate ball handling. He does something artful, dangerous or at least interesting almost every time he gets the ball.

Off the field, he consistently tops polls of the most admired public figures in France. A newly released documentary makes it clear that the French are crazy about him. Rather than another highlight collection — "Zizou" paralyzing defenders and mowing down goalies — the film simply follows his every move through an entire game from multiple close-up angles. It's an existential portrait of an icon: the sweaty grimace, the steely green eyes of his Berber ancestors, the balding pate of a warrior-monk.

Zidane represents rare values. In a celebrity culture of excess — David Beckham's tabloid flash, Diego Maradona's apocalyptic appetites — he is a shy family man devoted to his wife and four sons. In a crabby society in which everyone has an opinion or a complaint, he minds his own business. He refuses to discuss politics, except for terse criticism of Le Pen in 2002. He calls himself a "non-practicing Muslim."

Despite the seeming national obsession with vacations, strikes, early retirement and other ways of avoiding work, he is about second-generation discipline and dignity.

"My parents always taught us three things," he once said. "Respect, work and being serious."

But time diminishes heroes. A thigh injury hobbled him during France's first-round demise in the 2004 World Cup. He quit the national team, saying his game had faded and he wanted to make way for younger talent. This year he changed his mind — his country needed him.

A fairy-tale farewell in Germany looks unlikely. During a friendly match against Mexico here last week, he seemed lethargic. Even if he's brilliant, Les Bleus will have their hands full with powerhouses such as Brazil and Italy.

Ever since boyhood pickup games on the asphalt of Marseilles, however, Zidane has beaten the odds. He has pride and a contained rage that flares when pushed. He feels the yearning of the French, wracked by doubt and decline, for him to deliver one last time.

As bleak as things might appear, Zidane knows about miracles. Eight years ago, the son of an Algerian watchman ruled France — at least for a night.