Mr Jean-Pierre Raffarin's "government with a mission" is so eager to keep President Jacques Chirac's campaign promises that Mr Raffarin held a press conference yesterday to sum up its first 100 days - only 86 days after coming to power, writes Lara Marlowe.
The extraordinary session of the National Assembly that ends tomorrow has examined four draft laws: on security, justice, a 5 per cent income-tax reduction, and the employment of youths under 22 without social charges.
Mr Raffarin described the schedule for the autumn and winter as if it were a menu for a gourmet meal: the "softening" of the law on the 35-hour working week; the harmonisation of the five minimum wages created by the socialists; regional decentralisation "to pump oxygen into the Republic". And in early 2003 - the dessert course? - Mr Raffarin promised to tackle pensions.
In his previous career, the Prime Minister was a public relations executive. You can't help wondering how long his smooth talk will keep trade unions calm.
He said he did not want "to make a dogma" of defending la France d'en bas ("lower France"), the phrase he made famous. It was "more subtle" than a question of income, he explained. "Those who are designated by this term are all those who are not heard - farmers, craftsmen, businessmen - French people who feel they are not listened to. You must not turn them into a social category. I am very attentive to them."
But was he attentive to his European partners? Mr Raffarin said he "agreed in principle" with the Stability Pact, which requires EU governments to balance their budgets by 2004. "I think the ratios are difficult to keep to, but the principles are good. When I discuss it with European partners, they don't ask about the numbers. They ask: 'Is France finally going to take on its real problems? Are you finally ready to reform structures, the basics of your economy, and particularly the presence of the state in the heart of your economy?'"
France's military effort was for the benefit of European security and should be taken into account, he added.
On the Common Agricultural Policy, Mr Raffarin said the calendar agreed in Berlin had to be respected, and implied there would be trade-offs. "The big European dossiers should be dealt with together," he said. "The British are very attached to their cheque, and we understand; the Spanish to cohesion funds, and we understand. The Germans care about their contribution. And that is legitimate. France is very attached to the CAP. We can discuss all these things, but there is no reason to make the CAP a variable in European enlargement policy."
The Raffarin government has extended the hunting season for migrating birds by six weeks beyond that foreseen by European directives. "France loves Europe too much to reduce it to directives, procedures, strait-jackets, administrative bureaucracy." Mr Raffarin said. "I am profoundly European, but hunting in France comes to us from the revolution. It is not the same as hunting in other countries. I respect other countries' traditions."
