Sarkozy’s campaign director: Angela Merkel
By Paul Wells - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - 0 Comments
In one of the elaborate prime-time TV interviews with selected interrogators that are a staple of French presidential politics, Nicolas Sarkozy tonight put his fate in the hands of Angela Merkel. He announced a modest increase in, basically, the country’s GST — to kick in after April’s presidential election — to pay for reductions in business taxes to stimulate employment. That was a key feature of Merkel’s economic policy, designed to make it cheaper for employers to hire. He waved his hands a lot and alluded, in vaguer terms, to much tougher reforms implemented by Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, in 2004.
No analyst could miss the point: Germany is Sarkozy’s model now, and the perennially unpopular Sarkozy is following in the inexhaustibly popular Merkel’s footsteps.
But that wasn’t even the most extraordinary news in German-French relations this weekend, not even close. No, the most extraordinary news is that Merkel will campaign actively in France for Sarkozy’s re-election, going so far as to attend campaign rallies at his side. Continue…
-
Mergers: Sarkozying up to the chancellor
By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments
How Europe’s power couple makes the unlikeliest of pairs
Franck Prevel/Getty Images
Things were, as they say, touch and go there for a while between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy—way too much “touch” for the German chancellor’s taste (aides say Sarkozy loves greeting her with his country’s customary cuddle and double-kiss, largely because he knows she detests it), not near enough “go” for the French president (“France is acting, while Germany is only thinking about it,” he exploded a couple of years ago, as Europe slid into the economic abyss without, as Sarkozy saw it, appropriate intervention from Germany).But since the eurozone crisis took hold some months ago—all that bad Greek debt threatening to contaminate weaker European economies, like Spain and Italy—Merkel and Sarkozy have entered into an uneasy but powerful rapprochement. What else could they do? Germany and, to a lesser extent, France, are the economic superpowers who must either prop Europe up or watch it collapse. And so Sarkozy and Merkel now embody France and Germany’s long-time roles—the “dual engine of European integration”: they cozy up, meet endlessly, often into the wee hours, kibbitz on the horn, and even tag-team haranguing phone calls to recalcitrant colleagues like Silvio Berlusconi (whose unkind words about Merkel are much too salty to reproduce here). As Sarkozy put it: “It is vital that, in the face of this unprecedented crisis, France and Germany speak with one voice and form a common policy.” They are so united a front—the Maginot Line erased, a terrible booboo—that, as with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (and Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck before them), observers truncate the pair into a single, sentient being: Merkozy. At times their joint efforts elicit the rhetoric of erotica—for example, when Joachim Fels, chief of global economics at Morgan Stanley, called their suggestion that Greece might leave the eurozone “taboo,” as though monetary policy and forbidden love are closely aligned concepts.
-
‘Small change for banks’
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
Paul Dewar calls on the Harper government to support a financial transaction tax at the G20.
“The FTT will be small change for banks, but a major boost to the fight against inequality, poverty and climate change” said Dewar. “It will also cut the excesses of speculative market which were central to the most recent financial crisis.”
The FTT is supported by many European leaders including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Prominent international economists such as Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs back this change as do George Soros and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Dewar supports an FTT implemented with the widest possible international agreement through multilateral forums such as G20.
The EU proposal is supported by France and Germany. Two U.S. Democrats are proposing a similar measure. The Harper government opposes the current proposal and has opposed similar proposals in the past.
-
Newsmakers: Sept. 22-29
By Colby Cosh, Jaime J. Weinman, and Richard Warnica - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments
Miley gets political, the Pope gets stung and Julian Assange gets an autobiography he doesn’t want
Jason DeCrow/AP
No, they didn’t walk home
Two American hikers convicted of espionage in Iran were released after the sultan of Oman posted US$930,000 bail for them. Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, 29-year-old pro-Palestine activists and former Berkeley classmates, were seized along with a female friend while on holiday in 2009; Iran claims they illegally crossed their border on foot. The woman, Sarah Shourd, Bauer’s fiancée, was freed last fall on medical grounds. Bauer and Fattal’s release, with both in apparent good health, is seen as a political victory for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over hardline clerics in the Islamic republic.
Burqa fine
Only in France is having it and not flaunting it a crime. Last week, a court outside Paris fined two women for refusing to show their faces in public. Hind Ahmas and Najate Nait Ali were the first Frenchwomen charged under a law that bans full facial coverings outside the home. Passed last spring, the ban was aimed, rather transparently, at France’s substantial Muslim minority. It may also have been an attempt by President Nicolas Sarkozy to shore up his vulnerable right flank. But if anything, the law has galvanized supporters of the niqab. Ahmas told reporters she intends to challenge her fine in the European Court of Human Rights—while Kenza Drider, who also wears the niqab, now says she intends to run against Sarkozy in the presidential election. “When a woman wants to maintain her freedom she must be bold,” Drider told the Associated Press.
-
Pray—but not outside
By Alex Derry - Monday, September 26, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 1 Comment
A new ban against street prayer in France sends Muslims looking for space to worship
Franck Prevel/Getty Images
Just as Muslims throughout France prepared for their Friday prayers, the government passed a ban on Sept. 16 outlawing the increasingly common practice of praying in the street. Despite the ban being seen by some as an example of Nicolas Sarkozy’s government kowtowing to right-wing voters seven months before an election, and a small group of worshippers protesting the new measure in Paris, many among France’s five-million-strong Muslim population welcome the prospect of getting off the streets, provided they have somewhere else to pray.
France has enforced the separation of church and state since 1905, but a growing tide of anti-Muslim sentiment among the country’s more right-leaning groups has put pressure on Sarkozy to crack down on religious displays in public spaces. Particularly in cities, such as Paris and Marseilles, mosques are located in small buildings and storefronts with little space, leaving many worshippers no other option but to face Mecca in the street. Marine le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, has equated Muslims praying in Paris’s streets to the Nazi invasion of France in the Second World War, albeit “without the tanks or soldiers,” but instead with fundamentalist displays in a proudly secular society. “Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism,” Interior Minister Claude Guéant told Le Figaro. “All Muslim leaders are in agreement.”
Mohammed Salah Hamza is one of those leaders. As the imam who leads some 2,000 Muslims at a makeshift mosque in a vacant fire station in northern Paris, which opened on the day the ban became law, he says that moving worshippers into an actual place of worship is “the beginning of a solution.” But Hamza called on the government to be more accommodating to France’s Muslim population—the biggest in Western Europe—and opposed being herded into makeshift spaces. “We are not cattle,” Hamza told France’s TF1 News. The 2,000-sq.-metre fire station was only handed over to worshippers under a three-year lease two days before the deadline, after an uneasy accord was reached with municipal authorities. In Marseilles, a disused hangar was set aside as a temporary mosque in a similar deal, but is in a state of such disrepair that it was unusable for the Sept. 16 deadline. Guéant estimates that half of the country’s 2,000 mosques have been built in the last decade.
-
Giving up to a U.S. invader in France
By Patricia Treble - Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments
Because of disease, all of the Canal du Midi’s plane trees must be destroyed
John Lawrence/The Travel Library/CP
The canopy of plane trees that guard the banks of France’s Canal du Midi have created such scenic vistas that UNESCO calls it a “work of art.” Now that beauty is under threat by an invasive fungus in what President Nicolas Sarkozy calls “a great tragedy.”
For five years, officials have tried to contain Ceratocystis platani—believed to have arrived on wooden American ammunition boxes during the Second World War—by cutting and burning diseased trees plus the surrounding healthy ones. But the disease kept spreading along the historic canal, a 360-km network of waterways built in the 17th century to connect the Mediterranean with the Atlantic.
Now France has admitted defeat. It will fell all 40,000 trees. The chopping and replanting with resistant varieties, costing an estimated $300 million, will be carried out gradually to avoid leaving bald spots on the waterway’s banks. However, it will be decades, if not centuries, before the new trees are mature enough to recreate the magical views.
-
Can the EU be saved?
By Jason Kirby and Michael Petrou - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 16 Comments
Europe’s grand experiment seems to be failing
Reuters/Yiorgos Karahalis
Until recently, the tiny German town of Guben was best known—to those who knew it at all—for two things. With only the narrow Neisse river separating it from the Polish town of Gubin, it is one of few place where Germans and Poles live so close together. That, and Guben is also where the controversial anatomist Gunther von Hagens, famous for his museum displays of skinless human cadavers seated at poker tables, set up a factory six years ago to treat and preserve corpses.
Now Guben’s mayor, Klaus-Dieter Hübner, has set off alarm bells in Europe by calling for border controls to be put in place to stop Polish “criminals” from looting German businesses. Since 2007, when Poland joined the Schengen zone, a border-free travel area consisting of 25 European countries, Germans and Poles have freely criss-crossed into each other’s countries to shop, dine and work. With his call for security checks at the border, Hübner has challenged one of the pillars of modern Europe: the free movement of people and goods between nations.
Taken on its own, the border squabble in Guben is a seemingly minor concern, but it comes as the twin forces of economic stagnation and surging nationalism threaten to tear Europe apart. Even as European leaders struggle to halt the spread of the debt crisis—a task that they increasingly appear unable to handle—a wider backlash against European integration poses an existential crisis for the continent. Europe is failing, both economically and politically, leading to the question: can it be saved, or is Europe destined for the embalming slab in Guben?
-
Sarkozy’s deficit leadership
By Paul Wells - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 10:43 PM - 21 Comments
“Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on Tuesday called for closer coordination of economic policy among the 17 countries that share the euro currency and proposed that they enshrine in their constitutions an obligation to balance their national budgets.”
— New York Times, tonight
“France and Germany will propose that the 17 member states of the Euro zone adopt, before summer 2012, the golden rule on budget balance, to write into their Constitutions the objective of deficit reduction. The prime minister, François Fillon, will make the ‘necessary contacts’ with the various French political forces to see whether a consensus is possible to adopt this golden rule, Nicolas Sarkozy said.”
— Le Monde, tonight
M. Fillon should not waste too much time on this. Even if there were a consensus in France on a constitutional amendment to require budget balance, or at least to require a fond willingness to pretend to be moving toward something approaching budget balance (it is satirical to call something this vague a “golden rule”), I’m here to tell you there is no way to amend 17 national constitutions for any purpose before next summer.
Besides, as everybody knows, there is no way on Earth to make Nicolas Sarkozy serious about budget restraint. Might as well try to make him modest and tall. A brief stroll down memory lane: Continue…
-
Sarkozy attacked by pedestrian
By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 12:51 PM - 0 Comments
Man pushed French President to the ground during visit
A man is in police custody and may face up to 3 years in prison and a 45,000 euro fine after attacking French President Nicolas Sarkozy during the his walkabout in Toulouse, France on Thursday. Sarkozy, 55, was shaking hands with people behind a fence, when a man reached out his hand, took the President by his suit lapel, and pushed him to the ground. Plainclothes security guards were quick to jump in and arrest the man, who is currently detained in Agen.
-
Chirac really doesn’t like Sarkozy
By Cynthia Reynolds - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments
In a new memoir, former president Jacques Chirac lashes out at the man who once abandoned him
Jason Edwards/Getty Images
In releasing the second instalment of his memoirs, The Presidential Time, former French president Jacques Chirac has reignited a long-time feud with fellow right-winger and current president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. While initially touting Sarkozy as the most gifted politician of his generation, Chirac—who held the presidency for two terms before Sarkozy entered office in 2007—proceeds to slam the man he has frequently referred to as “the Traitor,” describing him as “nervous, impetuous, overflowing with ambition, doubting nothing, least of all himself.”
Though they both belong to the UMP party, the bad blood goes back to the 1995 presidential election, when Sarkozy, Chirac’s then-protege, abandoned his mentor in favour of another conservative candidate. Chirac went on to win, while the famously pugilistic Sarkozy took on the more expressive role in their unfolding rivalry, among other things poking fun of Chirac’s renowned love of sumo wrestling. Chirac mostly remained silent. But four years out of the Élysée Palace and just 11 months before the next election—and while Sarkozy’s dismal approval ratings hover around 34 per cent—Chirac apparently deemed the time ripe for revenge.
He casts Sarkozy as a divisive figure prone to exacerbating tensions, referring to the president’s controversial policies that have unleashed multiple street protests throughout his tenure, most recently his expulsion of the Roma from France. But in an interview with Le Figaro, Chirac denied his words were an attack. Instead, he described his present relationship with Sarkozy as honest and cordial. Classic Chirac—his career flip-flopping earned him the nicknames “Chameleon Bonaparte” and “la Girouette” (the Weather Vane).
-
Baby bump politics
By Leah McLaren - Monday, June 6, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments
Will Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s pregnancy help her embattled husband?
Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters
Last week, at the G8 summit in Deauville, France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, supermodel-turned-wife of the French president, greeted her fellow first wives in what was quite obviously a white maternity smock.
After exchanging air kisses with such lesser-known political spouses as Svetlana Medvedev, wife of the Russian president, Geertrui Van Rompuy-Windels, wife of the European Council president, and our very own Laureen Harper, Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy and her lady friends posed for an obligatory photo op. As the cameras zoomed in on her burgeoning baby bump (a.k.a. the worst-kept secret in Europe), Bruni smiled coyly and motioned to her belly. “Sooner or later it’s gonna come out,” she said—an observation that is as correct on a political level as it is a biological fact.
Earlier this year, Nicolas Sarkozy’s approval ratings slumped to an all-time low, with the worst polls showing that a scant 21 per cent of the country approved of his leadership. Then-unconfirmed rumours that his 43-year-old wife was pregnant (apparently with twins via IVF treatment, if you believe the tabloids) did not initially seem to give him much bounce in the polls. But with the surprise career implosion of former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who until recently was widely touted as Sarkozy’s top political rival), the French president’s prospects for re-election in 2012 are looking somewhat brighter.
-
Newsmakers: May 19-26
By Nancy Macdonald - Friday, June 3, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
Lady Gaga makes an entrance, Mark Zuckerberg learns a new skill and Saudi women are driven to rebel
Kevin Mazur/Wireimage/Getty
Laying it down with Beantown
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Twitter plea for help in coming up with a friendly wager with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino prompted some great ideas. “There’s a good one: sushi versus clam chowder, and swapping our best beers from two great beer-drinking cities,” Robertson told reporters in Stanley Park, a few steps from the iron statue of Lord Stanley—which currently sports a Canucks jersey. “One that I really like, that I’m going to campaign for with the mayor of Boston, is that the loser buys season’s tickets for a couple of inner-city kids in the winning city,” he said. Another favourite, he joked, would see the loser “swimming with an Orca” or “wrestling a bear.”
Ending the IMF boys’ club?
The bid by France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to become the first female head of the International Monetary Fund was pushed forward at the G8 meet-up in Deauville. She once famously complained there is “too much testosterone” in high-powered circles, a comment that now looks prescient. French President Nicolas Sarkozy talked her up to Barack Obama; Hillary Clinton hailed her candidacy. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev called her the near-consensus choice, though China and India want a non-European from a developing country.
-
Sarkozy stumbles on the world stage
By Jen Cutts - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 10:59 AM - 0 Comments
The French president is hoping a yet another reworking of his cabinet will lift his flagging reputation
Francois Nascimbeni/Reuters
After taking a drubbing in recent weeks for a string of slip-ups on the world stage, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is hoping a reworking of his cabinet—his fourth in less than a year—will lift his flagging reputation. Sarkozy announced several changes last Sunday, including ousting foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, who’d only been in office for three months. Alliot-Marie had controversially vacationed in Tunisia over Christmas, as anti-government protests were gaining momentum, and, in January, offered the Ben Ali regime the use of French police.
The most notable criticism of Sarkozy came from a group of unnamed French diplomats, who published an opinion piece in Le Monde last week accusing him of “amateurism, impulsiveness and [a] short-term preoccupation with the image in the media.” They refuted his attempts to stick envoys with the blame for France’s slowness to react to the crisis in Tunisia, as well as in Egypt. Gaffes on the international stage are a sore point for the French, who take a particular pride in their nation’s diplomatic abilities. A recent opinion poll found that 59 per cent of respondents don’t want Sarkozy to run in the 2012 election.
-
Newsmakers
By macleans.ca - Friday, January 7, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
Shania Twain’s big day, Pat Robertson’s surprise stand, and the next Siskel and Ebert
All’s well that ends well
Shania Twain tied the knot on New Year’s Day in Rincon, Puerto Rico, with Frédéric Thiébaud, the ex-husband of her ex-best friend, who apparently was too friendly with her ex-husband, Mutt Lange. Twain was escorted down the aisle by her nine-year-old son, Eja. “I’m in love!” she wrote in her blog last month.Drummers, they get no respect
It’s no surprise the birthplaces of the Beatles have a special place in their countrymen’s hearts. Oxford Street Maternity Hospital, where John Lennon was born, has been preserved and converted into apartments. Walton Hospital, Paul McCartney’s birthplace, has likewise been maintained and converted into luxury apartments. People still live in George Harrison’s birthplace, 12 Arnold Grove. Then there’s Ringo Starr, whose childhood home faces the wrecking ball. British Housing Minister Grant Shapps has urged Liverpool council to reconsider plans to raze the rundown row house at 9 Madryn Street, where the former Richard Starkey was born, as part of a redevelopment plan. Ringo has said the house should be “done up” rather than knocked down. The campaign is on behalf of fans, who contribute millions to the local economy, says the group Save Madrin Street. It’s not for Ringo, “who has enough homes of his own.” -
Year in pictures – March
By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments
Maclean’s presents the best photos of 2010
-
Sarkozy vs. the press
By Julia Belluz - Monday, December 13, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments
Laptop thefts, surveillance, threats—French journalists are complaining of a new era of media intimidation
Most of the reporters who say they have been targeted have been investigating politically explosive stories and scandals | Guillaume Horcajuelo/Eric Feferberg/EPA/Keystone Press
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has had, at best, a peculiar relationship with the press. Unlike his remote predecessors, who shut journalists out of their private lives, Sarkozy ferried reporters right into the presidential bedroom. “Me and Carla, it’s really serious,” he gushed at his first major press conference in 2008, referring to then-girlfriend Carla Bruni, whom he married that year.
In addition to courting the press, Sarkozy has enjoyed unprecedented power over it. The 23rd president of the French republic is the first to be in charge of nominating the chairman of France’s public television broadcaster, France Télévisions. Close friends, too, run some parts of the media, which has raised questions about dropped stories and the sacking of journalists who present unfavourable depictions of the leader. “Sarkozy plays with the press more than any other president,” says Dominique Moïsi, founder and senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations, “and he also seems more intent on controlling it.”
-
Sarko's new globetrotter
By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments
Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie will bring a steady hand and right-wing point of view to the job
Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images
With the masterpiece of Nicolas Sarkozy’s domestic policy (raising the retirement age from 60 to 62) safely hung on the wall, the French president has signalled that he will refocus his efforts on the global stage, an always popular move in a country that has seen its influence decline over the past century. While Sarkozy is busy selling the G20 nations on global currency plans or trying to impress Russia, he needs someone to manage the rest of the foreign file with the precision of a TGV conductor. That’s why he fired Bernard Kouchner, the left-wing foreign minister with whom he has often butted heads, and replaced him with former justice minister and one-time leadership rival Michèle Alliot-Marie.
The choice is a strong signal that Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party is going back to its conservative roots, says Thomas Klau, the head analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris. Alliot-Marie, known as “MAM” for her schoolmarm fashion sense, possesses the “safe hands” Sarkozy needs as he packs his suitcase and prepares to impress the world ahead of 2012’s national elections, says Klau.
-
The eternal trouble of drawing up a guest list
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 9:19 AM - 43 Comments
The Prime Minister gets drawn into the Wikileaks drama, seemingly as a result of French pity.
Levitte began by explaining the French decision not to invite the Germans to the June 6 D-Day commemoration. “It’s my fault,” said Levitte, who said that President Sarkozy had initially been keen to invite German Chancellor Merkel to participate. “I pointed out to the President that if Merkel came, then Sarkozy would be obligated to invite the heads of state of Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic as well.” Moreover, all of those leaders would have to be given an opportunity to speak as well, which would lengthen an already long ceremony. The cases of the UK and Canada were exceptional, he added, because both Gordon Brown and Stephen Harper were in such political trouble at home that the survival of their governments was at stake.
-
Sarkozy calls journalists 'pedophiles'
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 12:43 PM - 7 Comments
French President offers apparent lesson in unfounded accusations
“See you tomorrow, pedophile friends!” was French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reported farewell to reporters at the NATO conference in Lisbon, reports Radio France Internationale. Sarkozy was expressing his anger at journalists during a 10-minute briefing that his aides say was supposed to be off the record. He accused the media of reporting on allegations of bribery without any proof, despite the fact that a former defense minister is behind the allegations that during the 1995 presidential campaign of Eduoard Balladur, Sarkozy arranged for kickbacks from submarine sales to Pakistan. “Not a single one of you believes that I organized kickbacks for submarines in Pakistan. It’s incredible and it gets on television,” Sarkozy told reporters, before turning to one journalist and announcing, “You, I’ve got nothing against you. Apparently, you’re a pedophile… Can you explain yourself?” The Elysée denies the comments were made.
-
France isn't the only country that needs to get real
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments
Energetic protests against plans by the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy to reform the French retirement system have cut national fuel supplies, stopped trains and roiled the nation
MAXPPP/HUGUES LEGLISE BATAILLE/KEYSTONE PRESS
France’s penchant for public displays of political discontent is frequently at odds with the basic tenets of economics and logic. Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous 19th-century French writer, noted as much during the Paris Commune unrest of 1848 when he observed that French rioters understood quite a bit about politics but very little about the economy. Over a century and a half later, not much has changed.
Energetic protests against plans by the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy to reform the French retirement system have cut national fuel supplies, stopped trains and roiled the nation. But despite all this furious protesting, the motivation behind it requires a deliberate blindness to economic reality.
The current minimum age for retirement in France is 60, and a full public pension is available at 65. Today, there are approximately four people of working age for every person in France receiving public benefits. Without changes, the ratio will drop to 2:1 by 2050. A falling birth rate and lengthening life expectancy are to blame for this demographic crunch, along with a lowering of the retirement age from 65 to 60 in 1983 by the socialist government of François Mitterrand. It’s one of the lowest retirement ages in the developed world. The pay-as-you-go public pension plan is forecast to run a $45-billion deficit this year.
-
Europe loses its cool
By Charlie Gillis and Nancy MacDonald - Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments
A pampered continent protests the rollback of its lavish welfare state
Charles Platiau/Reuters
Hugo Christy doesn’t have to worry about his pension for 40 years. He hasn’t even started working yet. None of this has stopped the 21-year-old student from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris from joining thousands of striking workers in mass protests against the French government’s pension reforms.
Rolling strikes and nationwide demonstrations against the move all but brought the country to its knees, as people from all walks of life decried the hike in the French age of retirement from 60 to 62, and the age for full state pension from 65 to 67. Last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to call in riot police, who used tear gas and batons to clear key fuel depots and get gas flowing to service stations—more than a quarter had run dry. Strikes shut Marseille’s docks, and left many of the southern port city’s sidewalks filled with rotting garbage. More than 300 high schools were blockaded, and streets from Paris to Nice were flooded with youth and workers carrying drums and bullhorns, chanting slogans, staging sit-ins, and singing the Internationale, the socialist anthem. Children as young as 10 demanded their government withdraw its reforms, suggesting either remarkable awareness, or some early instruction by their parents in the art of dissent.
-
Newsmakers
By macleans.ca - Friday, October 22, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments
Angelina Jolie offends her Bosnian sisters, Stieg Larsson’s missing book, and a new memorial for Terry Fox
Guess who?
Always controversial, Sri Lankan musician Maya Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., donned a niqab for Spike TV’s Scream Awards. Whether it was a comment on burqa-banning fever everywhere from France to Quebec to Syria, or just a fashion statement, was left unsaid; M.I.A. gave photogs a black-gloved middle finger.One local boy to another
After 27 years, Vancouver’s B.C. Pavilion Corp. is pulling the plug on its controversial pink and green beaux arts Terry Fox Memorial Arch, the city’s lone memorial to Terry Fox. It will go, as part of an ongoing $563-million renovation of B.C. Place. Vancouverites who have griped quietly about the garish memorial—made of tile, brick and stainless steel, and featuring four fibreglass lions—may be heartened to know that Vancouver artist Douglas Coupland, who wrote 2005’s touching tribute, Terry, has signed on to design the new one. Coupland’s latest piece of public art, “Digital Orca,” is being shown outside the Vancouver Convention Centre.Eyes right
Angela Merkel left pundits round the world slack-jawed with a weekend speech claiming German multiculturalism had “utterly failed.” It was an illusion, the German chancellor added, to think that Germans and the country’s immigrant class could “live happily, side by side” without newcomers assimilating. Immigrants, she said, “should learn to speak German.” Even centre-right daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung seemed cool to Merkel’s new hardline stance. Newcomers, it argued, “should be made to feel welcome.” But the hard right, whose support Merkel needs, feels differently. Merkel, once Europe’s most popular leader, is facing a conservative revolt within her centrist Christian Democratic Union party and, with a poor showing in regional elections this spring, could lose the leadership altogether. -
Sarkozy’s Roma stumble
By Charlie Gillis - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments
The beleaguered president thought a crackdown would help him in the polls. No such luck.
GETTY IMAGES/ JACQUES BRINON REUTERS
When he promised five years ago to take a pressure washer to a housing project populated mainly by immigrants, Nicolas Sarkozy’s political stock soared. Two years later, when he invited disgruntled newcomers to “leave a country they don’t like,” the resulting publicity helped propel him to the Élysée Palace. So on a level of crass politics, France’s 55-year-old president had every reason to think his latest dip in the well of Gallic xenophobia would pay off. Seldom has a French leader gone wrong playing defender of la République against the intruding hordes.
How, then, did a Sarkozy government offensive against illegal gypsy encampments in the country’s central cities turn out to be such a cringe-inducing failure? It’s been four weeks since authorities began deporting ethnic Roma by the planeload. Yet with each “repatriation” flight back to Romania, a backlash has grown. With more than 630 Roma expelled and 117 squatter camps dismantled, officials with both the European Union and the UN were criticizing the exodus, noting that few of the gypsies appeared to understand their rights. By last week, the chorus of critics had expanded across political and religious boundaries. Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris, condemned the operation as “a circus,” adding, “there are certain lines that must not be crossed.”
-
Sarko’s summer soap opera
By Kate Lunau - Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments
A scandal over a billionaire heiress’s fortune won’t help the French president sell austerity
DANNY GYS/REDUX/ HORST OSSINGER/KEYSTONE PRESS
A family feud over the fortune of France’s richest woman—Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics empire, who’s worth a reported $20 billion—has touched off a scandal about alleged illegal campaign contributions that threatens to drag down Nicolas Sarkozy himself. For the French president, who’s pushing austerity measures to shore up the country’s economy in the face of the global economic crisis, it couldn’t have come at a worse time: earlier this month, his approval rating fell to 33 per cent, making him the most unpopular French leader since the pollsters started keeping track 30 years ago.
When he was elected in 2007, Sarkozy was something of a novelty in France, says Edward Berenson, director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University. “He wasn’t squeamish about money and success,” he says. While it intrigued voters at first, “two years into the economic crisis, that perception is costing him.” And with l’affaire Bettencourt splashed across the French dailies—rife with tales of cash-stuffed envelopes and lavish gifts—the recession-rattled public’s patience for Sarkozy is wearing thin.
-
Un challenge
By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 2:48 PM - 5 Comments
Nicolas Sarkozy, host of next year’s G8, makes a declaration of bold specificity.
“I thank my Canadian friends for their contribution. I don’t know how it was organized,” he said in French. “I can tell you we are in a hotel where the comfort is extremely sufficient and extremely reasonable. I haven’t seen anything sumptuous. As for the French G8/G20, even though I can’t confirm the Canadian numbers, they will be ten times less. Exactly.”
