THE WEEK THAT WAS... (September 30, 2013)

Whilst French President Francois Hollande faced a new poll giving him the lowest rating (23%!) of any French president in 20 years, the French newspapers were hailing Angela Merkel after her overwhelming election success as the undisputed leader not just of Germany but of all Europe. ‘Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, Chief of Europe’ said the front-page of Le Monde, a left-leaning French quality paper.

It looks like Hollande’s problem is that he, like a ballerina, has to do the splits ( a ‘grand écart’ as the French call it). On one side Hollande as Head of State has to do (just) enough to satisfy the European Commission with budget cuts and changes to the (too) expensive French social security system; on the other side as a socialist leader he has to avoid ruffling the feathers of the powerful labour unions in his country.

A good example of such a ‘grand écart’ is the pension proposal released by the French government last week. It offered incremental changes that would affect only the private sector, leaving untouched the - although not in Greek dimension- the large number of public servants. In many EU countries the retirement age is now 67, while in France it is 62 and that only because of an increase of 2 years pushed through under President Sarkozy, Hollande’s predecessor. But from Hollande’s point of view his proposal worked. He kept his campaign promise to protect benefits and he showed he is a change from his predecessor.

It looks like the French are not as easy to convince as Hollande would like. His predecessor, never extremely popular either, managed to keep his ratings up. And… he managed to make more fundamental changes in the French social security system.