Certainly not the year of the French

FRANCE: A resounding No to the European treaty, losing the 2012 Olympic Games and street riots - not the best 12 months for …

FRANCE: A resounding No to the European treaty, losing the 2012 Olympic Games and street riots - not the best 12 months for France, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris.

A tsunami of ill-humour submerged France in 2005, leaving a trail of wreckage in which the European constitutional treaty, rejected by 55 per cent of French voters on May 29th, was the first casualty.

President Jacques Chirac’s credibility was collateral damage. Chirac was so weakened by the No vote, the loss of the 2012 Olympics to London in July and a minor stroke in September, that by the time the year’s second major disaster – three weeks of rioting – struck in November, he was all but silent.

A poll published on December 11th showed that only 1 per cent of the French wanted Chirac to stand for a third term in 2007.

READ MORE

Mr Chirac was the first European leader to propose a European constitution, in Berlin in June 2000. When the treaty was concluded under the Irish EU presidency in mid-2004, two-thirds of the French electorate approved of it. But the French president had not reckoned with his compatriots’ dark mood, nor the opposition of the former socialist prime minister Laurent Fabius.

Early 2005 saw lycée students protesting at attempts to change the baccalauréat exam and demonstrations against the partial rollback of the 35-hour working week. Chirac’s political allies stood trial in yet another corrupt party financing scandal. The finance minister resigned when it emerged that taxpayers footed the bill for his €14,000-a-month apartment.

In a television encounter that went wildly wrong, Chirac came face to face with France’s self-obsessed Me generation on April 14th. The debate was supposed to be about the European constitution, but turned into a gripe session. "I don’t understand," the president confessed.

By then, the polls had already predicted a No victory for several weeks. "The French want to say merde to someone or something," the former socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin diagnosed France’s malady.

Ultimately, fantasies of Polish plumbers sweeping into France to take French jobs did for the treaty. The fear that the constitution would increase unemployment was the number one reason cited by No voters. Feeling "fed up" was the second.

So Chirac sacked prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and replaced him with the aristocratic, photogenic Dominique de Villepin, who gave top priority to fighting France’s 10 per cent unemployment.

By autumn, de Villepin established himself as the only challenger on the right to the interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy for the 2007 presidential nomination. Their rivalry continued through the November riots. Against Sarkozy’s wishes, de Villepin and Chirac imposed a state of emergency, which will expire on February 21st, 2006.

The riots were sparked off by the accidental electrocution of Bouna Traore and Zyed Benna, sons of African and Arab immigrants from the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

Two other people were killed in violence related to the unrest. Some 10,000 vehicles and 233 public buildings were destroyed by fire. Insurance experts estimate damage at ¤200 million.

After the European referendum defeat, France debated whether its "social model" of a generous welfare state was still feasible. After the riots, the country questioned "the French model of integration" which has resulted in minorities being confined to ghettos.

On both issues, de Villepin, backed by Chirac, said France must adapt but preserve its model, while Sarkozy alone demanded radical reform. As Sarkozy moved blatantly further to the right, de Villepin discreetly followed.

In the wake of the riots, the entire country seemed to swing right; polls this month showed unprecedented public acceptance of the ideas of the National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. One in three Frenchmen said they thought of themselves as racist and 56 per cent said there were too many foreigners in France.

The power struggle on the right and unease over France’s apparent inability to integrate immigrants fed an orgy of historical navel-gazing.

While the rest of the world considered global economic issues and the war in Iraq, France became obsessed with Napoleon, slavery and the Algerian war. In the absence of a decisive approach to the future, it was easier to live in the past.