France: President Jacques Chirac tried to defuse France's tense mood in his Bastille Day television interview yesterday with repeated calls for dialogue and reminders that "the State cannot do everything", writes Lara Marlowe
"We are in a difficult, uncertain world," Mr Chirac said at the start of his hour-long television appearance, which was broadcast live from the Élysée Palace.
"Faced with a situation like this, linked to the global crisis, there are several possible attitudes: fear, turning in on oneself, tensing or hardening up, blocking others out, or confrontation. These attitudes lead to nothing - or rather to immobility and failure." The only possible solution, he continued, "is movement, an open mind, adapting to the world as it evolves."
He hailed the Raffarin government's reform of the pension system, which should align the privileged public sector with the more hard-working private sector, as "inevitable" and "true progress". He commented indirectly on two months of transport and teachers' strikes prompted by the pension reform, saying his country's culture was "more a culture of confrontation than of dialogue".
The government is to undertake reform of the health care system in the autumn, and there are fears of more industrial action once the holidays are over. "You never make true advances through confrontation," Mr Chirac warned.
There were only two solutions for the ageing French population, Mr Chirac said: "increasing (pension) contributions or lengthening the duration of contributions". The government had opted for the latter. "For the first time there was dialogue ... negotiation," he boasted. He promised the government would begin "real communication, real explanation" as soon as the law was passed by parliament.
Critics of the Chirac/Raffarin method note it consists of concluding agreements with minority unions, then attempting to impose the accord on the entire sector. This was the case during the teachers' strike, and with the new unemployment arrangement for freelance entertainment workers.
The resulting strike has led to the cancellation of dozens of summer cultural events, including "the festival of festivals" at Avignon. Mr Chirac called the cancellations "a terrible artistic, human and economic waste". He quoted a letter addressed to him by 650 prominent entertainers, including the actor Gérard Depardieu. They rejoiced that the European Convention maintained a clause on "the cultural exception" in its draft constitution at French insistence, but pleaded with Mr Chirac to find an alternative to the "brutal and unfair" reform of free-lancers' status. Mr Chirac vowed to pursue the television stations and production companies who abused the world's most generous unemployment insurance for actors, dancers, musicians and technicians.
And the French President apparently caved in to the entertainers' demands. "National solidarity for the benefit of culture must play its role," he said. "That is the reason why I have asked the government to set up before next January 1st a system of assistance to cultural creation which aims to solve the problem of these free-lancers, of these young creators, so that their projects will be financed, for the duration."
Concessions to social unrest help dig France's budget deficit ever deeper. The IMF predicts the French deficit will exceed 4 per cent this year. Yet Mr Chirac claimed he would forge ahead with tax cuts promised when he was re-elected. Paris would head off confrontation with Brussels over the EU "Stability Pact" - which caps deficit spending at 3 per cent - by asking for a renegotiation, Mr Chirac announced. The EU regulation was in fact called the Stability and Growth Pact, he stressed, and economic growth had dropped dramatically.
He said he regretted Corsica's rejection of the July 6th referendum proposal to change the administrative status of the island. He had personally appealed for a Yes vote, and the result was widely considered the most severe defeat suffered by the 14-month-old Raffarin government.
Security was tight at la garden party at the Élysée, and at the military parade on the Champs-Élysées in the morning. The 4,750 police and gendarmes protecting the President outnumbered the 3,800 soldiers he reviewed. Last year, a right-wing extremist, Maxime Brunerie, took a shot at Mr Chirac with a hunting rifle. Mr Brunerie waits in the psychiatric ward of Paris's La Santé prison while judges decide whether he is fit to stand trial.