Copies des articles cités le 24 juin 06
French Premier, on Assembly Floor, Rails at Socialist's 'Cowardice'
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
When François Hollande, the Socialist Party leader, berated the French government for its handling of the crisis at
In an outburst that was both highly personal and filled with rage, Mr. de Villepin shouted: "I denounce, Mr. Hollande, the superficiality, and I would even say, looking at you, cowardice! Cowardice! There is in your attitude, I say it again, cowardice!"
Socialist members of the Assembly tried to drown out Mr. de Villepin with cries of "Resign! Resign!" Some deputies moved forward, toward the prime minister, before storming out of the chamber.
Henri Emmanuelli, a Socialist deputy and a former president of the National Assembly, shouted, "He's mad!"
The session — the regularly scheduled Tuesday hearing with Mr. de Villepin and other ministers — came to an abrupt end.
Mr. de Villepin's outburst followed an accusation by Mr. Hollande about the growing scandal involving the newest super-jumbo jet from Airbus and the controversy over suspected insider trading by the French co-chief executive officer of its parent company, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, known as EADS.
Mr. Hollande asked whether the French government, a major stakeholder in EADS, continued to support the executive, Noël Forgeard.
Mr. Hollande also charged that Mr. de Villepin lacked the trust of the French people and would not regain it by filing a libel suit against three journalists. On Monday, Mr. de Villepin took the unusual step of suing the journalists, who wrote two books on a complicated financial scandal known as the Clearstream affair. It was considered a politically risky move, in that it could force him to testify about the case in court.
Mr. de Villepin has been accused — he insists wrongly — of ordering an undercover investigation in 2004 of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, his political rival, in connection with the Clearstream affair. Mr. Sarkozy has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
After Tuesday's parliamentary session was cut short, Mr. Hollande demanded a formal apology from Mr. de Villepin. "It is he who must bring serenity back to the chamber," Mr. Hollande said. He added that Mr. de Villepin "has lost his head."
Calls for Mr. de Villepin's resignation have increased in recent months, even within his own UMP party, following the failure of his initiative to create jobs for young people. Opposition to the law sparked huge demonstrations.
An opinion poll last weekend in a weekly newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, indicated that his approval rating stood at 23 percent, compared with 28 percent a month ago.
In recent weeks, Mr. de Villepin, who had been considered a possible center-right candidate for the presidency, has been savaged by his critics. Le Monde's cartoonist has drawn the impeccably tailored Mr. de Villepin as a homeless man in a cardboard box, and as a disheveled bureaucrat.
An editorial in Monday's Le Monde, titled "End of a Reign," referred to the "angry powerlessness of the prime minister," adding that President Jacques Chirac had a clear choice to "change the prime minister or step down himself."
By contrast, Ségolène Royal, Mr. Hollande's longtime partner, the mother of his four children and a Socialist deputy, has for months been the most popular politician on the left in opinion polls on the election for president next year..
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
The Times
Sorry, says struggling leader who called rival a coward
From Adam Sage in
After an explosive row late on Tuesday, when he was led away by stewards for his own protection, Dominique de Villepin returned to parliament yesterday to apologise to Xavier Hollande.
“If some of my words wounded you personally, I regret that and I withdraw them,” a contrite M de Villepin told M Hollande, the Socialist leader.
M de Villepin had accused M Hollande of lâcheté (cowardice) for urging the dismissal of Noel Forgeard, joint chief executive of Airbus’s parent company, EADS, after the collapse of its share price last week.
In the usually restrained French National Assembly the use of the word lâcheté, which carries ignominious overtones harking back to collaboration with the Nazis, was an astonishingly virulent attack.
“It is the worst insult that can be made against a public figure,” said Jean-Marc Ayrault, leader of the Socialist parliamentary group whose members walked out of parliament in protest on Tuesday.
M de Villepin’s apology was a fresh humiliation for a leader whose ability to govern is being questioned on all sides of the political spectrum.
With his own centre-right MPs in open revolt, his announcements ignored and his ratings at a record low M de Villepin risks being stripped of all but the trappings of power.
The result is a climate of deep uncertainty in a nation that traditionally relies on the State for a sense of direction. Key decisions, such as the privatisation of Gaz de France, the state gas supplier, are being postponed and opinion polls say that voters are turning to extremist parties, including the ultra-right National Front.
The malaise has been fuelled by President Chirac’s retreat to the sidelines after a stroke last summer. “We have rarely seen such a divorce between a head of government and his majority,” wrote Libération yesterday. It was difficult to see how it could continue until the presidential election next spring, it went on.
With the press denouncing a gaffe and the Left demanding early elections, centre-right MPs turned on their leader. “He needs a holiday,” said Dominique Paillé. “He has to go,” said Christine Boutin.
M de Villepin, 52, a flamboyant figure and admirer of Napoleon, viewed the prime minister’s job as a stepping stone to the presidency. His dreams were shattered when he had to withdraw key labour reforms after mass protests this spring.
Embroiled in a spy scandal and damaged by a growing rift with his centre-right rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, he would win just 4 per cent of the vote if he stood for the presidency, an opinion poll predicted this week.
His decision to privatise Gaz de France has been blocked by his supporters, who fear a fresh clash with unions. He also faces tough opposition to his plan to cut 15,000 public sector jobs.
M Chirac has told friends that he is reluctant to sack M de Villepin because it would be an admission of failure and he he has no suitable successor.
UNPARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE
“The Prime Minister clings to data in the way a drunkard clings to lamp-posts — not for illumination, but to keep him standing up”
Romano Prodi to Silvio Berlusconi, then the Italian Prime Minister
“Clement Attlee is a modest man who has a good deal to be modest about” Winston Churchill
“So unpopular, if he became a funeral director people would stop dying” Tony Banks MP on former Prime Minister John Major
“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up”
Paul Keating on John Howard, then Opposition leader and currently the Australian Prime Minister
“He is so dumb that he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time”
President Johnson on President Ford
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
Race for the Muddle
Left? Right? Whatever. He (or she) who would be
By Michael Meyer and Christopher Dickey
Newsweek International
It's good she did, for on this point there's room for doubt. Even fellow Socialists brand her a "second Sarkozy," referring to the tough-talking conservative Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who for much of the past year has been his party's most likely champion to succeed Chirac. And to be fair, they are right to be confused. Earlier this month Royal stole a march on her right-wing rival by proposing to scrap a pillar of the modern French welfare state, the 35-hour workweek. "Too flexible," she pronounced it—a threat to the rights and incomes of full-time workers. That came just days after she outflanked Sarkozy on another of his favorite issues, law and order. The way to deal with first-time criminal offenders, she suggested, was discipline within "a military framework" to instill correct principles of honesty, hard work and community service.
Her remarks sent Socialist elders into meltdown. Her own life partner and the father of her four children, Socialist Party leader François Hollande, condemned them as near apostasy. As the Socialists struggled to pull together a platform for the coming presidential campaign, to be voted on by the party faithful this week, her ideas were conspicuously absent. Yet here's the rub: according to recent polls, 66 percent of French voters say they approve of them, even if party leaders do not. If Royal continues her rise, the Socialists will be presented with a tough choice: adherence to nearly a century of ideological tradition—this is a party, after all, that still views the world as a struggle between capital and labor and sings the "Internationale" at official gatherings—or winning back the Elysée after 12 years. Beyond that, there's the bigger question of what all this represents. In her drive to the presidency, is Ségolène Royal at long last pulling
In a sense,
The muddle is partly the result of a basic contradiction built into
The record shows that if you rush to the middle too early, however, your party feels betrayed, and you're dead. Witness the 2002 ballot. Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin, prime minister for five years, tried to expand his base by declaring early on that his plans for the country were not "socialist." "That was second-round discourse," says Dominique Reynié, director of the Interregional Politics Observatory in
Haunted by that disaster, the heavyweights of the Socialist Party, known as the elephants, have been trying to assemble a program that will win back the far left. Thus Royal's lack of influence. But no matter. She's betting that first-round protest votes are less about ideology than a hunger for fresh images and ideas. Like Sarkozy, she senses that voters have wearied of the same old faces, left or right. They don't want extremes; they want something new, and that's what Royal seems to be. She's outpaced her Socialist rivals by such a huge margin that the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné recently ran a cartoon portraying her as Snow White surrounded by Socialist dwarfs.
So much for the elephants. Royal "is seen as a woman who's strict, conservative in her mores, attached to the family as a structuring element in society," says Reynié. Yet when it comes to politics, she's pragmatic, seeming to cherry-pick from left and right. Recently, she came out strongly in favor of civil unions for gays. the puritan royal brings the homos to the altar, read a headline in the left-wing daily Libération. She attacked the 35-hour workweek but strongly opposed the government's effort to liberalize the country's labor laws by making it easier for companies to hire (and fire) young workers. Royal's personal saga helps justify these contradictions. The daughter of a soldier—a deadbeat dad who left his family with nothing to survive on but charity—she has no trouble extolling the virtues of military discipline while sympathizing with the poor.
The political center gets murkier still as Sarkozy tries to stop Royal by ... embracing her. "Madame Royal can join us," he joked this month, playing to Socialist misgivings about her ideological bona fides. "Welcome to the club!" He surely hopes that Royal's own party stops her, because polls show the two of them in a near dead heat. Leave it to Le Pen, who remains the right-wing éminence noire of French politics, to sum up the confusion at the center: "Sarkozy is a man of the right who always wants to please the left, and Madame Royal is a fake woman of the left who thinks herself an American Marine sergeant."
Independent, unclassifiable—Royal's image may be muddled, but it's never middling. Yes, she is a Socialist, just not doctrinaire. And if the party can forgive her for that, she could well be the next president of
With Tracy McNicoll in
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13392194/site/newsweek/
Politicus: Chirac's potential heirs offer how much real change?
John Vinocur
Published:
The idea, which has a national pulse, is this: With Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal looking almost certain to be opponents for the French presidency next summer, the country is on a sure path toward new modernity and out of its dark, decades-long vale of debilitating slumber. Whoever wins.
All that's left is to fill in the blanks, goes the maxim of the week. Sarko, if you doubt Ségo has the necessary experience. Ségo - "this is a mother of four talking to you," she riffs - if in your mind Sarko's hard hand would rest heavy on the wheel of state.
Bernard Tapie, not a Socialist like Royal but both a former Mitterrand cabinet minister and self-described friend of Sarkozy, who is also head of the Gaullist party, gets a certain amount of frankness-credit here for having done jail time. He wrapped up
"Listen, the policy essentials are well defined in what Royal and Sarkozy say. There are differences between them. But they're in the margins."
To stay upbeat, you could call this a positive extrapolation about
The desire is real and affecting. But the evidence that
Much of the supposition that Sarkozy and Royal are fighting the same war from only superficially different flanks comes from recent remarks by Royal. In theory, she tried to be tough and realistic at the same time her Socialist Party was offering up an action program described by this week's Nouvel Observateur (quasi-official organ of
Basically, Royal sounded like Sarkozy. She said in substance that
Somebody obsessed with detail might recall that neither Jacques Chirac, nor Sarkozy as a cabinet minister in successive Chirac governments (nor Royal from the loyal opposition), ever dared take on the 35-hour week's futility for fear of bruising the electorate's sense that entitlements are for eternity.
Or might remember that Tapie, when he was Mitterrand's minister for cities, got permission to put 5,000 troops into immigrant neighborhoods as a means for confronting their "security issues." To next to no avail.
Reality in all this says that the Sarko/Ségo similarity on a detail or two only points out the vastness of the over-reaching French problems where they have not only no commonality of vision, but next to no explicit vision at all.
State interventionism that's been biblical writ forever for both the French left and right? As finance minister, Sarkozy hardly strayed from religion in bolstering or subsidizing this or that French company pressed by European Union decisions or potential non-French buyers. Easing the constriction of rules that make hiring or firing into continuing bad choices for French companies? Royal slammed job-market "flexibility" Scandinavian-style as a miserable solution.
Supercharging the process of immigrants' integration so as to really get beyond last year's riots in the
At this point, Royal, who still needs the backing of the elephants of her party to run as the Socialist candidate, just plain avoids taking a position on anything like immigrants and integration that doesn't offer immediate tactical advantage.
Fat chance too that either candidate will want to go to the heart of things by talking about the causes of why France feels scared, ill-equipped and so self-protective in a world of change. With words like corporatism and absolutism and anti-globalization as explanations, the same Nouvel Observateur (whose remake-the-world cover story asked, "Must Judas be Rehabilitated?") reported that
It published a poll showing that among 10 countries surveyed,
But there it is, all the same, in editorials and in private conversations: this idea that one way or another, with either Nicolas or
In an effort to support progress, but to warily verify its course, this corner's reader-service staff has come up with a checklist for gauging over the months how much Ségo and Sarko really move toward getting France off Immobility Island. It's suitable for posting on refrigerator doors:
Big picture (tick appropriate box): Has he or she taken a definitive position on statism and interventionism? Have they been explicit on a new French role in the European Union with a premise broader and more widely acceptable than invariable French leadership? Does either candidate offer up a more realistic French vision for the world than Chirac's multipolar mantra that forces
Smaller but essential themes: Who insists that alongside demonstrating their compatibility with
Keep score at home. The politicians won't do it for you.
E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com
Tomorrow: Roger Cohen on the
The idea, which has a national pulse, is this: With Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal looking almost certain to be opponents for the French presidency next summer, the country is on a sure path toward new modernity and out of its dark, decades-long vale of debilitating slumber. Whoever wins.
All that's left is to fill in the blanks, goes the maxim of the week. Sarko, if you doubt Ségo has the necessary experience. Ségo - "this is a mother of four talking to you," she riffs - if in your mind Sarko's hard hand would rest heavy on the wheel of state.
Bernard Tapie, not a Socialist like Royal but both a former Mitterrand cabinet minister and self-described friend of Sarkozy, who is also head of the Gaullist party, gets a certain amount of frankness-credit here for having done jail time. He wrapped up
"Listen, the policy essentials are well defined in what Royal and Sarkozy say. There are differences between them. But they're in the margins."
To stay upbeat, you could call this a positive extrapolation about
The desire is real and affecting. But the evidence that
Much of the supposition that Sarkozy and Royal are fighting the same war from only superficially different flanks comes from recent remarks by Royal. In theory, she tried to be tough and realistic at the same time her Socialist Party was offering up an action program described by this week's Nouvel Observateur (quasi-official organ of
Basically, Royal sounded like Sarkozy. She said in substance that
Somebody obsessed with detail might recall that neither Jacques Chirac, nor Sarkozy as a cabinet minister in successive Chirac governments (nor Royal from the loyal opposition), ever dared take on the 35-hour week's futility for fear of bruising the electorate's sense that entitlements are for eternity.
Or might remember that Tapie, when he was Mitterrand's minister for cities, got permission to put 5,000 troops into immigrant neighborhoods as a means for confronting their "security issues." To next to no avail.
Reality in all this says that the Sarko/Ségo similarity on a detail or two only points out the vastness of the over-reaching French problems where they have not only no commonality of vision, but next to no explicit vision at all.
State interventionism that's been biblical writ forever for both the French left and right? As finance minister, Sarkozy hardly strayed from religion in bolstering or subsidizing this or that French company pressed by European Union decisions or potential non-French buyers. Easing the constriction of rules that make hiring or firing into continuing bad choices for French companies? Royal slammed job-market "flexibility" Scandinavian-style as a miserable solution.
Supercharging the process of immigrants' integration so as to really get beyond last year's riots in the
At this point, Royal, who still needs the backing of the elephants of her party to run as the Socialist candidate, just plain avoids taking a position on anything like immigrants and integration that doesn't offer immediate tactical advantage.
Fat chance too that either candidate will want to go to the heart of things by talking about the causes of why France feels scared, ill-equipped and so self-protective in a world of change. With words like corporatism and absolutism and anti-globalization as explanations, the same Nouvel Observateur (whose remake-the-world cover story asked, "Must Judas be Rehabilitated?") reported that
It published a poll showing that among 10 countries surveyed,
But there it is, all the same, in editorials and in private conversations: this idea that one way or another, with either Nicolas or
In an effort to support progress, but to warily verify its course, this corner's reader-service staff has come up with a checklist for gauging over the months how much Ségo and Sarko really move toward getting France off Immobility Island. It's suitable for posting on refrigerator doors:
Big picture (tick appropriate box): Has he or she taken a definitive position on statism and interventionism? Have they been explicit on a new French role in the European Union with a premise broader and more widely acceptable than invariable French leadership? Does either candidate offer up a more realistic French vision for the world than Chirac's multipolar mantra that forces
Smaller but essential themes: Who insists that alongside demonstrating their compatibility with
Keep score at home. The politicians won't do it for you.
E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com
Could a Segolene rise so high over here?
Once again, the French have a lesson to teach us
Cristina Odone
The Observer
She is sexier than Liz Hurley and Monica Bellucci, and even Angelina Jolie is ahead by only a whisker. Segolene Royal, the socialist tipped to be the first female President of France, was voted the sixth sexiest woman in the world by
Once again, the French have a lesson to teach us. This mother of four is 52, powerful and independent. In
Royal's obvious success among voters serves as a sobering reminder to
But Kirkbride's sex appeal was seen as a handicap rather than an asset: party apparatchiks were wary of an easy-on-the-eye Tory gal in the mould of Virginia Bottomley (who had a child out of wedlock) or, heaven forbid, Edwina Currie (who had an affair with John Major).
And as Labour came to power, think of the opportunity missed with Oona King. Here was a head-turner who also knew how to win hearts with her sympathetic manner and to conquer doubts with her eloquent conviction. With the kind of nurturing that so many of the favoured sons receive as a matter of course, King could have been a real player.
Instead, Blairites seemed as spooked by her beauty as any skeleton in a ministerial closet. They ordered King to cheer on their war in
The irony is that, having resisted sexy women in their ranks, Tories and Labour now face an unpalatable truth: appearance is becoming more, not less, important in politics. David Cameron's fresh-faced and preppy looks have contributed hugely to his appeal among women and the young. He is more prized for being 'cute' rather than 'acute'.
Soon, every politician will be judged in terms of how they score in FHM as well as Mori polls, and
When these attractive faces are male, the party top brass may feel more at ease. We all risk being losers, males and females both. This side of the Channel, at least.
Give him a red card
Football brings out the worst in even the most cerebral of men. This, at least, must be Ayaan Hirsi Ali's verdict after the snub she experienced last Thursday at the hands of David Goodhart, editor of Prospect magazine. Ali, the famous Somali feminist and anti-Muslim polemicist, was in
Ali, scheduled to debate with Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, had been placed next to Goodhart at dinner. But he explained he couldn't miss the match between
Comments
French industrial policy
A magician loses his touch
From The Economist print edition
The limits of political legerdemain
WHEN Dominique de Villepin posed for the cameras in February, flanked by two French energy bosses who had agreed to merge their companies,
Just four months later, Mr de Villepin has been forced to postpone the project in the face of a growing parliamentary rebellion in his own party. By putting off a parliamentary debate until September, to gain more time to try to persuade his pesky deputies, he in effect admitted this week that he lacked a majority behind him—despite his party's dominance of the National Assembly. Although the two companies tried to sound upbeat about the timetable, the outcome remains uncertain. This week the European Commission opened an investigation on competition grounds. The Italians may now rethink their hand. And
Why has Mr de Villepin's concoction proved so volatile? First, for the merger to go ahead, the state will have to reduce its stake in GDF from 80% to 34%; hence the need for parliamentary approval. Privatisation of the gas utility is not only unpopular among voters, fearful that their gas bills will soar. It also breaks a government promise not to let the state's share fall below 70%. “There will be no privatisation of GDF,” declared Nicolas Sarkozy, then finance minister, two years ago, as he prepared the company for partial flotation. French governments have a habit of making such promises, only to ignore them later; but rarely do they do so this quickly.
The second difficulty is Mr de Villepin himself. When he devised the merger, he was still enjoying a honeymoon, with MPs and the electorate. Since then, however, his credibility has been battered.
The prime minister is also under pressure over the mess at the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS, see article), in which the French state holds a stake.
In short, the shambolic uncertainty about the energy merger is symptomatic of a broader problem of political authority. In June, Mr de Villepin's poll ratings sank to 20%, according to TNS-Sofres, a polling group, down four points from May. His own deputies, fearful for their jobs at next year's parliamentary election, do not want another show-down with public opinion. Many have defected to Mr Sarkozy, Mr de Villepin's chief rival on the right, whose popularity seems to have withstood the current troubles. This week, some could conceal their exasperation no longer. “The prime minister must go,” said Christine Boutin, one of his own deputies
Whether matters will be any calmer after the summer remains to be seen. La rentrée in
Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
A whiff of the tumbrils as business and state sever ties
By Martin Arnold and Peggy Hollinger
Published:
When Dominique
According to Laurence Parisot, head of Medef, the country's powerful employers' federation, the turbulence buffeting France's political and corporate establishment could signal nothing less than the dying days of the country's traditional system of political patronage. "We are at an important moment in French capitalism," Ms Parisot says. "We are [completing] the process of separating the worlds of business and the state."
In recent weeks the French corporate scene has been shaken by a string of scandals. At EADS and Vinci, the construction group, executive pay and perks packages triggered the rows. In the case of Safran, the aero-engines and mobile phones group, controversy centred on boardroom tussles for supremacy. In other instances - such as a mooted merger between the utilities Gaz de France and
When President Jacques Chirac's regime of copains et coquins (chums and scoundrels) was at the height of its power, the scandals might have been suppressed by a powerful network of interlinked businessmen and politicians or been nipped in the bud by decisive government action. But political rivalries at the heart of the government appear to have left it powerless to influence either companies or its own majority UMP party - and created confusion over the new rules of the industrial game.
"It is completely normal that we should have convulsions and complications," says Ms Parisot. "When
Take two failed takeover attempts by Veolia: first for the water business of rival
While some companies are ruing the loss of leverage, others see only opportunities in the government's impotence. For example, take the plans by Euronext, the Paris-based stock exchange operator, to merge with the New York Stock Exchange. The merger is being promoted by Euronext's management in defiance of the French government's stated preference for a "pro-European" deal with Frankfurt'sDeutsche Börse.
"I doubt whether Euronext would have attempted the deal with NYSE at the start of President Chirac's mandate four years ago, when the government was much stronger," one French banker argues.
In straight economic terms, the political crisis has had little impact on most companies, say economists and executives. Investment is buoyant, profitability is high and exports are growing rapidly. Moreover, globalisation has forced French business to rely first and foremost on its competitive edge. "
Yet some industrialists fear that in the longer term there will be a price to pay for the political vacuum. "The government has a very short-term strategy on economic policy, without any vision of the mid- to long term," says one chief executive.
Another French banker, from a big Wall Street bank, says: "There has been no consistently applied industrial or economic policy in any sector and I feel it has been very much a case of management from crisis to crisis."
It is a risk some senior officials acknowledge. One admitted that his minister was finding it hard to get any message across because the media were focusing on the political "shambles". Despite these concerns, many executives remain confident that there is little fundamentally wrong with French business.
"Look at all the problems we have had recently," says the head of one blue-chip company. "It has always been at the top, the little Marquis appointed by friends. But, underneath, the structures are sound. You just have to cut off a few heads and after the Terror everything will be fine. It is the fin de règne."
But with the end of Mr Chirac's regime still a year away, the political and corporate turbulence is more likely to intensify than subside.
Peggy Hollinger and
Martin Arnold
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
French agree: their shop staff are surly
By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor
(Filed:
French shop assistants are among the least helpful, least knowledgeable and most surly in
German stores, in contrast, top the poll for efficiency, knowledge and customer service.
Despite our love of whingeing about appalling service and lengthy queues,
The findings follow a survey of six western European countries by the retail consultants Grass Roots.
More than 3,500 mystery shoppers visited hundreds of fast food, financial services, car and mobile phone shops to compare customer service.
Nigel Cover, of Grass Roots, said German stores came top on an objective measure of customer service - which included length of queuing, knowledge displayed by the staff and whether assistants smiled - and a subjective score based on each shopper's overall opinion of customer service.
"Based on performance and satisfaction, the Germans came out top," he said. "While the
"The expectations from
"The fact that satisfaction and performance levels for
Queues in
The German shop staff were said to be extremely knowledgeable and were best at closing sales.
"The French scored second lowest and lowest in every category, from the environment and the waiting time to the smiling and greeting customers," said Mr Cover. "We don't want these things to support our stereotypes, but in a strange way they do.
"If this had been an Englishman's perception of
British shop staff scored well on the way they greeted customers. But they fell down on their lack of knowledge about goods they sold.
The survey also found that one customer in four was unwilling to return to a shop, or recommend it to a friend.
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
Un certain sourire
Posted by Colin Randall at 19 Jun 06
Tags:
How are you being served in French shops? Appallingly, if we can believe the survey carried out by the retail consultants Grass Roots.
Shopkeepers can be pleasant
Shopkeepers are charming, but make sure you say 'bonjour'
The vendeurs and vendeuses of
My colleague David Derbyshire reports that despite the British penchant for complaining about rotten service and long queues,
According to Grass Roots, the volunteer inspectors – 3,500 of them in all – assessed shops in their own areas, the aim being to avoid the risk of national or regional prejudice.
That is pretty much all I know about the survey’s methodology. But when the news desk asked for my thoughts, I expressed surprise at the harsh judgment on
My own experience is that service in
For every bored, hostile or ignorant shop assistant, there are probably many more only too willing to offer help and advice the moment a customer walks in.
Sometimes, if you want a bit of time to browse, they can be a little too eager to pounce. And they do expect your visit to produce some business. Leaving without making a purchase can be fleetingly uncomfortable, complete with an icy glare or a curt au revoir.
But in how many British shops would an assistant automatically offer a paquet cadeau – hand-wrapping, and often quite elaborate wrapping at that – after the most modest transaction, and even at Christmas? This practice is commonplace in
Customers play an important part in determining what kind of service they receive in
If French shops have a problem, it is the same one that surfaces in restaurants and any other point of contact between staff and public: a distinct lack of personnel.
Whatever defenders of the French social economic model like to think, those rigid labour laws, and the steep charges levied on employers, are cited over and over again as disincentives to recruitment.
The individual offering evidence for or against the Grass Roots findings is likely to be restricted to anecdotes. I spend as little time as possible in the shops of any country; in France, however, I do find that visits to electrical appliance or mobile phone stores invariably involve exasperating waits for service, or even long searches for anyone employed to give it.
Rudeness occurs from time to time. My wife bought an umbrella from Monoprix on the
Yet a letter to the store manager produced abject apologies, an honest explanation and a refund of 30 euros, 12 more than she had paid.
But when I remember the battle I had with Wm Morrison after a bottle of their bleach seeped all over the rest of my shopping, and also ruined some clothing, I am forced to wonder if things really are so much better in Britain.
That dispute, too, was resolved only after I lost patience with the robots and wrote to Sir Ken Morrison himself.
Posted by Colin Randall at 19 Jun 06
posted by JB CADIER at 11:11 AM
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