AFTER the year of a choice of president, 1996 will be the year of a choice of society for France. The December of discontent has posed vital question about the direction the country as it enters into the 21st century, and with it, the direction of its European-partners.
France's year of choice coincides with a year of choice for Europe as a whole, when the inter-governmental conference will decide how the future Union should look. But many French people have balked at the liberalised marketplace that is Europe. The recent social upheavals in France went much deeper than a broad protest in defence of a social security system, or a public service. The one or two million people who marched in the streets were also crying out that there was more to life than economics
It was an expression of "spiritual hunger" to quote one philosopher's assessment.
Of course, the agitation may have been the last convulsions of an old paternalistic system forced to modernise like those of its European partners. Throughout its history, France has been reluctant to reform. Decolonisation, decentralisation and economic liberalisation have all happened later and with more problems than elsewhere.
France may yet manage to put on the Maastricht convergence straitjacket by cutting its public deficit from five per cent to three per cent by the end of 1997. Its vast public service may be opened up to competition and privatisation like those of some of its partners. If that is achieved, historians will look back to December's social movement as the last protest of another age, the equivalent of the "keep Algeria French" protests of the early 1960s.
The inevitable consequence of alignment with its European partners and operating within an independent marketplace will be the end of two centuries of the tradition of the all-embracing French state. Of course, this revolution has been going on for some time, particularly in the private sector.
But this winter's social unrest revealed a kind of counter-revolution among ordinary French people who see no hope and no comfort in the common European future. The pegging of the franc to the mark, so vaunted by their rulers, has translated into mass unemployment, stagnation in the economy, ever-increasing taxes and contributions for workers, social exclusion for many without jobs.
If this movement maintains a strong voice, the French government will be obliged to take it into account when it reconsiders its role in Europe this year. Pressure from the people may force France to postpone, or at least delay its qualification for a single currency, with obvious repercussions for the rest of Europe.
Few people could have predicted that 1995 in France was going to draw to a close in this way. At the beginning of the year, the favourite to win the May presidential election to end the 14-year rule of President Franois Mitterrand was the then prime minister, Mr Edouard Balladur. But by February, he was being edged from his dominant position by his Gaullist party colleague, Mr Jacques Chirac, who played on the raw nerve of populism and politics of the heart.
"I refuse a policy which consists of desperately seeking to balance the books," he told cheering supporters at rallies.
In the final run-off, the socialist Mr Lionel Jospin was only narrowly beaten by Mr Chirac, elected without much enthusiasm by voters grown cynical on a diet of austerity, broken promises and political corruption.
What followed was the most spectacular loss of faith among the people in recent French history. For just a few days, President Chirac was the darling of the right, of young people and even some left-wing intellectuals. Prime Minister Alain Juppe appointed a young government with a record 12 women members. Almost immediately, the decline began.
In June, the President announced the resumption of nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific, suspended by Mr Mitterrand since 1992. The world outside reacted with almost unanimous outrage, seriously damaging France's reputation abroad.
Mr Chirac, who had come to power on a promise of tax cuts, then presided over a two per cent increase in VAT and a sharp rise in indirect taxation after Mr Juppe pointed to the "calamitous" state of the public finances.
The malaise was compounded by a bombing campaign in France carried out by Algerian fundamentalists, which left eight people dead and some 200 injured. The popularity of Mr Chirac and his Prime Minister plummeted.
When Mr Juppe tried to rebound by proposing the most substantial reform of the social security system for decades, he was met by an explosion of social grievances from ordinary people who rejected a vision of the future reduced to the lowest common denominator of balance sheets and productivity.