Wall Street Journal: Industrious Albion

Blackleaf

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Oct 9, 2004
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Industrious Albion: Britannia, and neither France nor Germany, is again the economic and industrial powerhouse of Europe, although France wants to ruin all that. The French have ruined their economy by working just 35 hours a week. They've now tried to make those laws apply to every country in the EU but the British, knowing how damaging it will be to the economy, are trying to to get out of it. But the dirty Froggies are trying to stop us from doing it.





France's 35-hour week has had "negative consequences." That's putting it mildly, but those words coming last week from French President Jacques Chirac himself count as an admission of failure. His treasurer was more concrete. The forced leisure added €100 billion to the national debt, Finance Minister Thierry Breton said.

That doesn't mean the government will now scrap the law, which would require political courage. But whenever the French can't implement good economic policy at home, they usually revert to Plan B: using the European Union to export their wrong-headed ideas across the Continent. So, at today's meeting of EU labor ministers, Paris will lead the push for Britain to drop its opt-out from an EU law that limits the average working time within a four-month period to 48 hours a week. Not quite the 35 hours in France, but it's a start.

When the law was negotiated in the 1990s, Albion said thanks, but no thanks, and got a blanket exception. Employees in the U.K., if they so want, can clock in up to 78 hours a week. This has been a sore point for Paris ever since. The Finns, who currently hold the EU presidency, propose a compromise: a cap of 60 hours a week over a three-month period that would only apply to Britain. Still an opt-out, but only of sorts. British industry worries that the revised law could add more red tape and costs. And Britain's reputation is at risk. The current opt-out "sends out a strong message that the U.K. is a place where business can be done," David Frost, head of the British Chamber of Commerce, told us.

Despite these misgivings, London has signaled that it could live with such a compromise. The French may be the ones who actually scupper the deal. Paris insists on a date for any new opt-out to end, which the U.K. resists and the Finns didn't propose.

Europe's working-time directive is what ought to be thrown out, but for now the French are endangering a useful compromise that also solves another problem, one that affects the entire EU, including France. Last year's ruling by Europe's highest court said that the "on call" period of employees must be counted as work even if they are ASLEEP during that time. Hospitals would have to hire an extra army of doctors to comply with the ruling, adding billions to Europe's already exploding health-care costs. The Finnish compromise on the table solves that problem by redefining working time to exclude periods spent sleeping on call. Unless Mr. Chirac wants more "negative consequences," he'd better agree to the deal.

The Wall Street Journal
www.wsj.com

Lazy Continentals.