PARIS, France (UPI) -- To understand the current French political crisis, with street battles between police and protesting students and a general strike called for Tuesday, there are few better starting points than the latest GlobeScan survey of international opinion that finds France is the country most hostile to free markets and to free trade.
The survey, which last summer polled 1,000 people in each of 20 countries around the world for the University of Maryland, and was published Sunday, found that only 36 percent of French respondents agreed that 'the free enterprise and market economy system is the best way to reduce poverty.'
In China, 74 percent agreed, along with 71 percent in the United States, 70 percent in India, 67 percent in Britain, 65 percent in Germany and 63 percent in Poland.
France was the only European country where less than half the respondents supported the free market, and the only country among all the 20 polled where a majority of respondents said that free markets were not the best way to secure jobs and economic growth and prosperity.
This was no isolated result. Another poll last year by the German Marshall Fund found the 74 percent of French respondents said that free trade increased unemployment.
And the bizarre feature of France`s current crisis is that all three sides of the current French political crisis subscribe to this anti-capitalist view that free markets are a threat and that the state should maintain a dominant role in the national economy, owning companies and setting a national industrial strategy.
The students, who have in the past month occupied their universities and schools and taken to the streets to demonstrate against the new labor law of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, want government guarantees of job security and protection against the hire-and-fire economy of free markets.
The labor unions, who are backing the students and have called a general strike that is expected to cripple France Tuesday, also want to maintain the current system of job security that protects those who have jobs and mandates a 35-hour week with an average five weeks a year of paid vacation.
And the government that is seeking to introduce modest reforms that will make it easier for employers to hire new workers and reduce the dismaying level of 24 percent youth unemployment is also increasingly hostile to free trade.
The French government is blocking efforts by the European Union to reach a compromise over the current Doha Round of the world trade talks, insisting that Europe`s traditional system of farm subsidies and protective tariffs on food should be maintained. France is also at loggerheads with its EU partners by launching a new strategy of 'economic patriotism' that blocks foreign takeovers of key French companies, despite the law which declares the EU to be a single market.
Prime Minister Villepin has brought in new laws to declare 11 sectors of the economy to be 'security areas' and off-limits to foreign buyers. He has also announced that ten of France`s biggest companies with no security implications, like the Danone dairy and yogurt group and the Carrefour supermarket chain, will be protected against foreign takeovers.
The French government will intervene where necessary, Villepin declared, to protect France`s 'national champions,' like this month`s maneuver to block an Italian takeover of the Suez utility group by brokering an all-French deal to merge Suez with Gaz de France. Significantly, the corporate chiefs of Suez and of Gaz de France are, like Villepin, graduates of ENA, the Ecole Nationale d`Administration, which produces each year 100 highly-trained young administrators known as 'enarques' who dominate France`s corporate, bureaucratic and political elite -- and who have collectively presided over the years of stagnation and high unemployment that have led to the current crisis.
Students, labor unions and France`s political leaders alike all share a suspicion of free trade, free markets and to globalization, which is usually described in the French media as an 'Anglo-Saxon' system that leads to intense competition, job insecurity, lower wages and the outsourcing of jobs to cheaper countries.
The much lower levels of unemployment in Anglo-Saxon countries like Britain and the United States are dismissed as the result of 'Macdo culture,' after the supposedly low-wage and semi-skilled jobs at U.S.-style fast food places like McDonald`s. (Ironically, McDonald`s is a big success in France, opening 30 new restaurants this year, while closing 25 in Britain.) The Anglo-Saxon system of lower taxes and hire and fire and low-wage entry-level jobs is condemned as the raw capitalism of the jungle -- despite their higher growth rates.
France touts instead its culture of 'solidarity,' which means high taxes to finance a generous welfare state, and a high level of job security that dissuades employers from hiring new staff because it is then difficult and costly to fire them in a downturn. This is the logic behind Villepin`s new labor law that allows employers to hire people under the age of 26 but then to fire them -- without explanation -- at any time in the next two years.
In short, this tiny step towards an Anglo-Saxon style of labor market reform by the government is being violently resisted because it is seen as betraying the French culture of solidarity, even though that culture is visibly in trouble and failing its under-employed and under-skilled young people. The student revolt and this week`s general strike are thus reactionary rather than revolutionary, even as they are justified as being 'progressive' by defending France against the competitive horrors of globalization.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/article_1150282.php/France_v._Anglo-Saxons
The survey, which last summer polled 1,000 people in each of 20 countries around the world for the University of Maryland, and was published Sunday, found that only 36 percent of French respondents agreed that 'the free enterprise and market economy system is the best way to reduce poverty.'
In China, 74 percent agreed, along with 71 percent in the United States, 70 percent in India, 67 percent in Britain, 65 percent in Germany and 63 percent in Poland.
France was the only European country where less than half the respondents supported the free market, and the only country among all the 20 polled where a majority of respondents said that free markets were not the best way to secure jobs and economic growth and prosperity.
This was no isolated result. Another poll last year by the German Marshall Fund found the 74 percent of French respondents said that free trade increased unemployment.
And the bizarre feature of France`s current crisis is that all three sides of the current French political crisis subscribe to this anti-capitalist view that free markets are a threat and that the state should maintain a dominant role in the national economy, owning companies and setting a national industrial strategy.
The students, who have in the past month occupied their universities and schools and taken to the streets to demonstrate against the new labor law of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, want government guarantees of job security and protection against the hire-and-fire economy of free markets.
The labor unions, who are backing the students and have called a general strike that is expected to cripple France Tuesday, also want to maintain the current system of job security that protects those who have jobs and mandates a 35-hour week with an average five weeks a year of paid vacation.
And the government that is seeking to introduce modest reforms that will make it easier for employers to hire new workers and reduce the dismaying level of 24 percent youth unemployment is also increasingly hostile to free trade.
The French government is blocking efforts by the European Union to reach a compromise over the current Doha Round of the world trade talks, insisting that Europe`s traditional system of farm subsidies and protective tariffs on food should be maintained. France is also at loggerheads with its EU partners by launching a new strategy of 'economic patriotism' that blocks foreign takeovers of key French companies, despite the law which declares the EU to be a single market.
Prime Minister Villepin has brought in new laws to declare 11 sectors of the economy to be 'security areas' and off-limits to foreign buyers. He has also announced that ten of France`s biggest companies with no security implications, like the Danone dairy and yogurt group and the Carrefour supermarket chain, will be protected against foreign takeovers.
The French government will intervene where necessary, Villepin declared, to protect France`s 'national champions,' like this month`s maneuver to block an Italian takeover of the Suez utility group by brokering an all-French deal to merge Suez with Gaz de France. Significantly, the corporate chiefs of Suez and of Gaz de France are, like Villepin, graduates of ENA, the Ecole Nationale d`Administration, which produces each year 100 highly-trained young administrators known as 'enarques' who dominate France`s corporate, bureaucratic and political elite -- and who have collectively presided over the years of stagnation and high unemployment that have led to the current crisis.
Students, labor unions and France`s political leaders alike all share a suspicion of free trade, free markets and to globalization, which is usually described in the French media as an 'Anglo-Saxon' system that leads to intense competition, job insecurity, lower wages and the outsourcing of jobs to cheaper countries.
The much lower levels of unemployment in Anglo-Saxon countries like Britain and the United States are dismissed as the result of 'Macdo culture,' after the supposedly low-wage and semi-skilled jobs at U.S.-style fast food places like McDonald`s. (Ironically, McDonald`s is a big success in France, opening 30 new restaurants this year, while closing 25 in Britain.) The Anglo-Saxon system of lower taxes and hire and fire and low-wage entry-level jobs is condemned as the raw capitalism of the jungle -- despite their higher growth rates.
France touts instead its culture of 'solidarity,' which means high taxes to finance a generous welfare state, and a high level of job security that dissuades employers from hiring new staff because it is then difficult and costly to fire them in a downturn. This is the logic behind Villepin`s new labor law that allows employers to hire people under the age of 26 but then to fire them -- without explanation -- at any time in the next two years.
In short, this tiny step towards an Anglo-Saxon style of labor market reform by the government is being violently resisted because it is seen as betraying the French culture of solidarity, even though that culture is visibly in trouble and failing its under-employed and under-skilled young people. The student revolt and this week`s general strike are thus reactionary rather than revolutionary, even as they are justified as being 'progressive' by defending France against the competitive horrors of globalization.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/article_1150282.php/France_v._Anglo-Saxons
