FRANCE: Aides to the French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, billed his presidential campaign programme as "modern". But the "10 commitments" unveiled by Mr Jospin yesterday were reminiscent of 1970s Labour governments in Britain. If elected president on May 5th, Mr Jospin intends to add not a few contracts, councils and committees to the French welfare state.
Mr Jospin confused some of the left-wing electorate on February 21st when he said: "The project I propose to the country is not a socialist project." He made a U-turn yesterday, announcing, "This is the project of a socialist."
Mr Jospin's first commitment was to reduce the number of jobless by another 900,000 by 2007. He reiterated his call for a "European economic government" which would establish "a minimum European corporate tax rate, the necessary antidote to the poison of fiscal dumping". For once, the French Prime Minister did not single out Ireland by name.
The first of Mr Jospin's innovations is a "personal training account" which would entitle every French citizen to education throughout life. He would reserve 200,000 jobs for people over the age of 50 - a strange promise in a country where some trade unions demand retirement at 55.
Mr Jospin said continuing education, jobs for the over-50s and "the diffusion of new information technologies" were "structural challenges". He would give a portable computer to every French student. Reforming France's main "structural challenge" - the bloated, inefficient civil service - was not even mentioned. Nor was the need to decrease the "social charges" or obligatory withholdings that add 60 per cent to every French salary. On the contrary, Mr Jospin promised to perpetuate the present pension system under which active workers finance the retired.
The other leading candidate, President Jacques Chirac, has made the rising crime rate - up 16 per cent in five years - his main campaign issue. Borrowing a slogan from Mr Blair, Mr Jospin promised "to be hard on crime, and hard on the causes of crime". He would halve the housing tax, and promised to wipe out homelessness by 2007.
Mr Jospin's generosity extended to "childhood cheques" for baby-sitting outside school hours, pocket money for 18 to 25-year-olds and diplomas for 100 per cent of all schoolgoers. And, for good measure, debt forgiveness for developing countries.
