French Politics

France Gets Its Way

2009-11-27T10:33:00.002-05:00

Michel Barnier has been named an EU commissioner in charge of market and financial regulation, a key post that France has coveted. This despite British objections.

Identity Poll

2009-11-26T11:53:00.004-05:00

Here is a TNS-Sofres poll that asks people a variety of questions about their identity. It's Thanksgiving today in the United States, so I'm going to avoid any deep analysis, but a cursory inspection reveals some interesting nuggets in the detailed breakdowns. For example, not the distinctiveness of the responses of those who identify as members of the PCF.

Those of you who have more time to look at the details might want to leave comments. Incidentally, I've noticed that traffic on this site is higher on working days than on weekends, which suggests that most people do their blog reading at work! Today is a holiday in the US but not in France, so we'll have to see what happens to the hit count.

Industry-Research Jolly-Ups

2009-11-26T08:26:00.002-05:00

Back when I was a wee lad and student at MIT, I attended a few events at Radcliffe known as "jolly-ups." This was local student argot for what were elsewhere known as "mixers": opportunities for boy to meet girl et ainsi de suite. It seems that Valérie Pécresse has decided to organize Web-based jolly-ups where eager industrialists can couple up with research teams in search of a partner. Can't hurt, I guess, although my recollection of those student mixers is that there were relatively few successful matches, a lot of hopeful wallflowers, and a pecking order in which the winners were those who probably would have done just as well without the institutional intermediary.

Can't hurt to try, though--right?

Copenhagen--and Kabul

2009-11-26T05:10:00.004-05:00

President Obama will go to Copenhagen with a proposal to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 17% -- from its 2005 level. Le Figaro points out what The Times does not, namely, that Europeans measure their reductions against 1990 levels, not 2005. By this standard, Obama's proposal looks much more modest: just 4 percent. This sets up the possibility of a clash between Sarkozy and Obama, since, rhetorically for sure and to some degree in practice, Sarkozy has been quite aggressive on this front. It will be interesting to see how the two men handle their differences. Of course by the time they meet in Copenhagen, another difference--over troop levels in Afghanistan--may well overshadow the climate issue.

And of course no matter what agreement is reached (or not reached) in Copenhagen, Obama has one problem that Sarkozy cannot begin to imagine: the US Congress. It is not difficult to imagine how the Republicans--and some Democrats--will go after any emission reduction proposals in a time of high unemployment and fiscal distress. What is more, popular support for new environmental protection legislation has been declining in the US. President Sarkozy often complains, not without reason, about the difficulty of overcoming tous les conservatismes, but if he wants to sample a real political dogfight, he should try confronting tous nos conservateurs.

He Was For the Grand Emprunt Before He Was Against It

2009-11-25T14:01:00.001-05:00

Michel Rocard seems to be of two minds about le grand emprunt that he and Juppé cooked up together.

Montebourg Attacks the Reform of La Taxe Pro

2009-11-25T10:02:00.002-05:00

La Chute des départements ruraux
by Conseilgeneral71

This is an effective use of video and Internet to critique the proposed reform of la taxe professionnelle. Perhaps the Socialists will follow Montebourg's lead and make better use of the new media (h/t Christophe Barbier).

Mitterrand Will Meet Google

2009-11-25T09:01:00.004-05:00

Culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand is attempting to coordinate a common European approach to Google and its plan to digitize all the world's libraries. He'll take the European view into the belly of the beast when he visits Google HQ in California next year.

By the way, Blogger, the software, and Blogspot, the Web host, which bring you this blog are Google services. The Google empire is vast and far-flung and, though it seems benign and brings us many products which I personally would find it hard to live without (Google search and Gmail and Blogger have become essential parts of my daily routine), Mitterrand is right to be wary, as Robert Darnton, the head of Harvard's libraries, has pointed out. Contracts are contracts, and the language in Google's contracts is not quite as free-spirited as the image of Google's youthful founders might suggest. In any case, I'm glad to see that Mitterrand appears to be taking a pragmatic approach rather than simply invoking national pride and a certain protectionist instinct. Google's immense resources can be of great public benefit, but corporations outlive us all, and it is essential to protect the interests of future generations from the exclusivist instincts of Google (or its attorneys).

Hegel said that "the daily newspaper is modern man's morning prayer." Jean Baudrillard might say, rather, that Google services are post-modern man's simulacrum of sacred ritual. And it's always a good idea to be wary of what we sacrifice to what we take to be sacred and therefore untouchable.

The Van Rompuy Nomination

2009-11-25T08:39:00.002-05:00

Might his position on Turkey have won Mr. Van Rompuy his new job?

“Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe,” Mr Van Rompuy said during a meeting held at the Belgian parliament in December 2004.
“An expansion of the EU to include Turkey cannot be considered as just another expansion, as in the past. The universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are also fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey.”
Mr Van Rompuy’s speech puts him squarely on the side of Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, and Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, both of whom are willing to offer Turkey a “privileged partnership” but want to keep the country out of the EU.

Bruni and Allen

2009-11-24T07:09:00.002-05:00

Not Burns and Allen but Bruni and Allen: Carla has agreed to play in Woody's film. But it's this phrase that will no doubt grab headlines in France: "Quand je serai grand-mère, je voudrais avoir fait un film avec Woody Allen." We await announcement of the blessed event.

Good News for the French Economy

2009-11-24T06:32:00.002-05:00

Consumption continued to increase in France last month, a sign that the economic recovery has not faltered. From Le Monde's newsletter on the economy:

La consommation est restée soutenue en octobre
Les dépenses de consommation des ménages français en produits manufacturés ont continué d'augmenter en octobre, progressant de 1,1 % après une hausse de 2,4 % le mois précédent, a annoncé l'Insee mardi.
La consommation, principal moteur de la croissance française, continue de résister, conformément aux anticipations du gouvernement. Cette résistance n'est pas uniquement liée au secteur automobile. En octobre, tous les postes de la consommation enregistrent une hausse significative, précise-t-on dans l'entourage de la ministre de l'économie, Christine Lagarde.

Lecture: The Future of French Culture

2009-11-24T05:13:00.002-05:00

Several of you asked that I post the text of the lecture I gave yesterday at Harvard on "The Future of French Culture." Here is the text, and here are the accompanying PowerPoint slides. Warning: the slides file is over 15 megabytes and is in .pptx format (PowerPoint2007). If you have an earlier version of PowerPoint, you'll need a converter to open it. The lecture can be read without the slides.

Dreyfus on the Resistance and the Jews

2009-11-23T12:22:00.003-05:00

Jean-Marc Dreyfus offers a very interesting review of Renée Poznanski, Propagandes et persécutions. La Résistance et le « problème juif », 1940-1944. Just how did the Resistance approach the question of the persecution of Jews under Vichy's anti-Jewish laws and the deporation of Jews by the Nazis? It seems that historians have neglected the question until now, as if a sort of taboo were in place. Poznanski has broken the silence, and Dreyfus reports his results. Fascinating reading.

Compulsory Economics

2009-11-23T10:12:00.002-05:00

A course in economics will become compulsory in French lycées beginning in 2010.

Luc Chatel:

L'économie est un domaine où les sensibilités politiques et idéologiques sont fortes, c'est vrai. Cela dit, l'idée selon laquelle les profs sont des alter mondialistes poussant à la décroissance me semble totalement erronée! Mais, s'il faut revoir les programmes, il faudra les axer davantage vers l'aspect scientifique de la matière.

Hmm. L'aspect scientifique de la matière. An interesting phase that could hide many unavowable intentions.

Jacob on Finkielkraut

2009-11-23T09:41:00.004-05:00

Didier Jacob remarks, quite justly, on Alain Finkielkraut's recent ubiquity and penchant for giving stern moral lessons on anything and everything to anyone and everyone. Having defended the artist Polanski and the remains of Albert Camus and attacked the hand of Henry, he now finds that artists, too, are capable of excess: Marie Ndiaye, it seems, suffered from "verbal intoxication" when she said that she found the Sarkozy regime "monstrous." By contrast, you will recall, Polanski's victim had in Finkielkraut's account offered her ravisher consent by inebriation with his illustrious stature in the film industry. Monsieur Finkielkraut's moral compass seems to be broken, yet he continues to offer his services as a guide to anyone who will listen.

Together Again!

2009-11-22T08:06:00.003-05:00

Daniel Cohn-Bendit and François ("T'es minable") Bayrou have buried the hatchet and shaken hands for the sake of the climate. Dany even ironized that he hoped Ségolène Royal might crash their meeting.

Incentives

2009-11-21T03:18:00.001-05:00

As any economist will tell you, some incentives are invitations to forget about fair play.

"Dream Team of Mediocrity"

2009-11-21T03:10:00.005-05:00

Jean Quatremer doesn't mince words:

La responsabilité des gouvernements socialistes dans la nomination du trio Van Rompuy/Barroso/Asthon, une véritable « dream team » de la médiocrité, est historique. Ce sont les six premiers ministres socialistes (Grande-Bretagne, Espagne, Portugal, Grèce, Hongrie et Slovénie) qui ont, en effet, choisi, hier après-midi, la commissaire au commerce, la Britannique Catherine Asthon, comme ministre européenne des affaires étrangères, ce poste leur revenant. Un choix catastrophique : cette apparatchik travailliste n’a absolument aucune expérience internationale et, de l’avis de plusieurs personnes qui ont travaillé avec elle à la Commission, elle a été particulièrement mauvaise depuis sa prise de fonction le 3 octobre 2008 : absence de travail, mauvaise connaissance des dossiers, sens diplomatique réduit.

Lovely. More from Quatremer here on the selection process. And here he is on Van Rompuy, with yet another pronunciation (prononcez « vane rompeuille ») and another devastating characterization: "Plus simple et plus cliché belge, tu meurs." And then there is the indispensable Henry Farrell on the two big stories in Europe, the EU and football.

My Lecture

2009-11-20T11:36:00.004-05:00

For readers in the Boston area, a reminder that I will be lecturing on "The Future of French Culture" on Monday, 4:15-6, at the Harvard Center for European Studies, 27 Kirkland St., Cambridge, in the Lower Level Conference Room. The discussant will be Michèle Lamont. The lecture is open to the public, so please come! In fact, I will be talking mainly about the past, which is the only way I know to say anything about the future without a crystal ball. So if you're interested in French culture in the 20th century and how it has been affected by a variety of factors ranging from political and economic upheaval to educational reform, you might not find it a total waste of your time. (And even if you do, there will be a PowerPoint with pretty pictures to look at.) I will post the text on the Net after the talk.

Nick and Carla on the Simpsons

2009-11-20T10:40:00.001-05:00

Nicolas Sarkozy et Carla Bruni dans les Simpson !
by lemondededemainTV

More here.

Camus au Panthéon?

2009-11-20T10:09:00.005-05:00

You will recall that early in his presidency, Sarko went to Algeria and had Camus read to him in the open air as he stared out to sea. Now he wants to have Camus Pantheonized. This will be an "extraordinary symbol," he says. In four respects Camus will be a symbol of the kind Sarko especially likes: he was anti-Communist in the Cold War, he was born in Algeria and tried to remain above the fray in that war, he was un grand résistant (editorialist for the underground Combat), and he was the anti-Sartre. Sarko can get on board with all of these things. And Camus's style is classically pure--or, as this mauvaise langue puts it, "Camus ? Ce philosophe pour classes terminales, avec son style IIIe République et sa morale de Croix-Rouge ?" I am aware of the contempt for Camus in certain French cultural quarters (from the same article: On ne méprise plus Camus, on l'ignore. Et Jean Daniel n'a pas oublié le « ricanement » de Michel Foucault et des grands esprits qu'il avait rassemblés pour fonder « le Nouvel Observateur » en 1964, lorsqu'il citait son ami disparu), but I have never understood it. For an antidote, I suggest reading Tony Judt's The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century. (h/t Kirkmc)

Confusion in Europe

2009-11-20T07:13:00.005-05:00

There seems to be some confusion about the new EU president, or president of the European Council, or whatever his title is (that's the first confusion). The second is the pronounciation of his name:

À l'heure des people et de la confusion des genres, M. Van Rompuy (prononcer «rommpeuil») offre un charme plutôt suranné.

Mr. Van Rompuy (pronounced ROM-pow), 62, an economist, has been Belgium’s prime minister for less than a year.

Mr. Rompuy writes haiku. A sample:

“A fly zooms, buzzes; Spins and is lost in the room; He does no one harm.”

Oy, vey. The Times:

Mr. Van Rompuy, who likes bowling duckpins and writing haiku, has earned respect for calming ethnic tensions in Belgium in his 11 months as prime minister. Someone who met him recently described him as intelligent and humorous, but “timid.”

And how do we square this with the description of Rompuy as a ruthless opportunist, which I quoted yesterday from Le Figaro? Does anybody know anything about this guy?

Europe's Telephone Number

2009-11-19T15:07:00.004-05:00

OK, Europe now has a telephone number. Two of them. The president is Herman van Rompuy, the Belgian PM. Never mind that Belgium didn't have a government only yesterday. And the Foreign Minister is Catherine Ashton. Who? you ask. And well you might. Does it matter? Well, it might. Who knows? Who ever knows with Europe? It has to invent itself as it goes along. Vamos a ver.

Les initiés décrivent le futur président européen comme un cynique lancé à l'assaut du pouvoir et «sans pitié pour l'adversaire».

Peillon on the media

2009-11-19T11:21:00.002-05:00

Politique à domicile, Vincent Peillon
by POLITIQUEADOMICILE

The first minutes of this clip feature Vincent Peillon's ruminations on the changed relation between the media and politics over the course of his political career. The Socialists, he claims, used to jouer collectif, but now anyone who hopes to be elected president must pursue an individualist "media strategy" at the expense of the party. Perhaps this explains his resentment of Ségolène's intrusion upon Espoir à Gauche.

But Peillon's view of this change--that it is due to Sarkozy's success at cultivating la communication--is a bit short-sighted. It is the outsized role of the presidency that has personalized politics, and this is inherent in the structure of the Fifth Republic. Mitterrand may have been a creature of the party system of the Fourth Republic, but he rose by personalizing the contest with de Gaulle. Sarkozy's methods may be somewhat more modern but represent no fundamental innovation. I'm not sure why Peillon is so concentrated on the present and shows so little historical perspective.

Football and Politics

2009-11-19T07:58:00.008-05:00

I don't know squat about soccer, but I see that my beloved France is in a tizzy this morning about a hand ball. I won't even attempt a complete rundown of the lamentations, since this seems to be the biggest event in French history since Sarko took Carla to Disneyland. A few choice samples will suffice. Dany the Red: "La main de Thierry Henry, c'est le summum de la chance." The minister of sport: "On a eu une équipe de France qui était absolument asphyxiée, qui a obtenu son match nul à cause d’une grossière erreur d’arbitrage." Alain Finkielkraut, a "specialist in moral matters" (as Charles Bremner characterizes him): "We are faced with a real matter of conscience," he said on Europe1. "From the moral point of view I would almost have preferred a defeat to a victory in these conditions. We certainly have nothing to be proud of." Alain Juppé: "La France doit se battre pour rester dans le coup."

Oh, wait: Juppé isn't talking about the World Cup. He's discussing Le Grand Emprunt. It seems that France Is Falling Behind yet again, and that it needs to Invest In the Future. This is a hearty perennial of French politics, perhaps of politics everywhere. Juppé and Rocard, in perfect harmony on every point, according to Juppé, decided that the future lies in higher education (after discarding Juppé's pet project, a new TGV line, and Rocard's, a new canal--I think these two must have been jointly reading a history of the American economy in the 19th century). So the pot of gold, borrowed from the citizenry (actually from the banks: this will not in fact be the great popular loan announced with much fanfare by Sarkozy at Versailles), will go to mes confrères in academia. Good for our side.

But the money, says Juppé, will go only to universités d'excellence. Hmm. I spot a fly in the ointment here: a potential battle royal over the definition of excellence that could make the debate over national identity seem like child's play. After all, academics are really above the fray when it comes to identity. They have theirs, inherent in their diplomas and titles. But when it comes to grabbing a share of the 16 billion euro pot of excellence, their own irons are in the fire. I look forward to the match, but watch out for those hand balls. Finkielkraut's conscience will have to go into overtime. And no one trusts the referee.

UPDATE: Rama Yade, as usual, is out of step with her ministre de tutelle: she does not think "que l'on puisse parler de triche" : "Vous ne pouvez pas savoir exactement d'où vient le ballon et où il part. D'ailleurs l'arbitre n'a rien vu", a déclaré M^me"Thierry Henry lui-même a reconnu avoir touché le ballon. Il n'y a que lui qui sait si c'était volontaire", a-t-elle estimé, ajoutant : "Je ne crois pas qu'un joueur de son envergure, avec son expérience, avec son palmarès, le nombre de sélections qu'il a eues en équipe de France, avec l'amour qu'il a du jeu, qu'il soit un homme à faire de la pratique anti-sportive".

"Unrealistic but Interesting"

2009-11-19T06:05:00.004-05:00

That is one Scandinavian's verdict on the French climate plan proposed by Jean-Louis Borloo, which features aid to poor countries to compensate for the cost of environmentally friendly decisions. I actually find that judgment rather heartening, since pure realism in environmental matters (as in many other areas of public policy) often errs on the side of pessimism. Since my natural proclivities lie on that end of the spectrum, it's always useful to be confronted with "interesting ideas" that don't quite take full account of the awful weight of reality. The negation of reality, as Hegel knew, is the first moment of the dialectic.

And in this case, irrealism and justice happen to coincide. Developing countries rightly object to bearing as much burden as the developed countries that have made action on this front necessary. They deserve compensation and will not support environmental protection measures unless they get it.