WHEN CHRISTINE Broussier hears the common wisdom that the winds of recession have all but passed over France, it makes her town feel more remote than ever. “I’d really like to be able to say that, but I think we’re still in the thick of it here,” she says from behind the counter in the bookshop she runs on Châtellerault’s main square.
The decline in business at the bookshop has been “catastrophic”, Broussier says.
“We don’t have the feeling that things are improving.”
French voters go to the polls on Sunday for the first round of regional elections, and when analysts begin to pore over the results next week, the figures from places like Châtellerault will tell some of the most revealing stories.
An industrial city of about 35,000 people some 30 km from Poitiers in western France, it belongs to one of the most closely watched regions in the country, Poitou-Charentes, where two high-profile politicians (the incumbent Ségolène Royal of the Socialist Party and transport minister Dominique Bussereau) are fighting for the regional presidency.
Not only is Châtellerault politically volatile, having rotated its mayoralty between left and right in recent years, but it has felt the effects of the recession like few other cities in the country.
On a freezing midweek morning, with the gently falling snow giving the city centre a lazy serenity, a handful of posters are the only reminder that an election is around the corner.
People’s concerns lie elsewhere, says Gérard Barrin, a photographer who works in public relations.
“I think there’s going to be a huge abstention rate. People feel there are always electoral promises, and then they’re never followed up with anything solid. Some people despair over it.”
In Châtellerault, they could be forgiven their despair. Some 2,000 jobs have been lost in the city in the past two years, many of them in the car industry that was once a pillar of the local economy. The unemployment rate in the département (Vienne) rose by about 17 per cent last year and many of the factories that once thrived in the town’s northern industrial zone – New Fabris, Magnetti Marelli, Valeo – have either cut their staff numbers or fallen silent altogether.
That has in turn caused a serious dent in every part of the town’s economy.
In the office belonging to the CGT, one of France’s biggest trade unions, on rue du Cognet, Jacqueline Rigaud staffs a drop-in centre for people in need of advice.
Two years ago, most of her work involved dealing with poor working conditions. Today, her job is all about redundancies, with clothes shops, garages and restaurants all shedding staff.
“You should see this office when people come in here crying,” she says wearily.
“You get men crying as well as women . . . It’s a catastrophe, and I really don’t see how we’re going to get out of this.”
Ask about electoral issues in Châtellerault and there can only be one reply. Although regional authorities in France deal mainly with transport, schools and training, pollsters all over the country are being told the same thing: the issue uppermost in people’s minds when they go to vote this weekend will be jobs.
Against that background, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party is expected to be dealt a stern rebuke, allowing the left to whisper cautiously that it hopes to claim all 22 regions on mainland France.
And while regional elections generally have limited bearing on national political currents, these ones – being the last test of public opinion before the next presidential poll in 2012 – could be rich in useful insights.
Can the UMP defy the worst predictions? Can the left make that clean sweep and begin to overcome the internal divisions that have afflicted it for years? Will the National Front begin to reverse its recent decline? And can the Europe Écologie alliance consolidate its position as a serious political force?
If there is a limit to what can be read into the election results, most agree it will be imposed above all by a high abstention rate.
One committed non-voter is Murielle Valier from Châtellerault, a middle-aged woman who says she has only gone to the ballot box twice in her life. Her disenchantment is total.
“The situation doesn’t change,” she says. “Maybe when they get us some jobs, I’ll listen to them when they come looking for our votes.”