No holiday for France
Sam White
Paris
There was a time when French governments introduced unpopular measures — invariably fiscal ones — in the month of August when traditionally the largest number of French were on holiday. Ever the innovators, however, the Socialist government has improved upon this method by clobbering the taxpayer just before he goes on holiday and then once again immediately on his return. I need hardly add that President Mitterrand's popularity rating in the public opinion polls has fallen eight points in the past month and is now strikingly lower than that of any of his predecessors after a similar time in office.
As though this conjuncture of actions was not already clumsy enough, the govern- ment added to the intending holidaymaker's problems by making its 'cash down' contribution to its forced loan payable by midnight on 30 June on pain of forfeiting the money outright and with it the 11 per cent interest that goes with it when the loan becomes repayable in three years' time. At this point one began to wonder whether there is not a particle to Mitterrand's name and whether it is not he rather than his predecessor who is the château-bred aristocrat. The lowest categories of taxpayers are exempt from this compulsory loan, but it still embraces a sufficient number of people on relatively modest incomes for whom raising the cash was a problem and especially so at this time of the year when it clashed with holiday
financing.
What with all this and currency restric- tion on those planning to holiday abroad, the net effect has been to persuade a great many people to forget their holidays altogether, or at least take less than the five weeks to which they are now entitled.
The result has been a predictable wave of cancellations at French holiday resorts and an outcry of rage from hoteliers who stand to lose a sizable portion of their annual windfall. At the same time, the government has announced an increase in both workers' and employers' contributions to the unemployment insurance fund, thereby still further reducing purchasing power at one end while increasing the burdens on in- dustry at the other. It has announced, too, that the extra taxes imposed this year will be repeated next year and that there will be no easing of austerity generally until at least the end of 1984. It has also let it be known more discreetly that a large proportion of the civil servants due to retire will not be replaced — an ironic postscript to one of the government's first acts which was the recruitment of 200,000 extra civil servants.
All the indications are, wrote Le Monde last week, that France is moving into an economic recession 'of the utmost gravity' of which the government and the public generally are only beginning to grasp the scale, and which will have its repercussions even inside the Socialist Party itself. It is probably this latter possibility, as much as the steady decline in his own and M Mauroy's ratings in the public opinion
polls, that decided M Mitterrand to address the nation twice within three weeks.
Apart from this purely propagandist theme, which amounted to saying that Socialist austerity was not the same as austerity carried out by a right-wing govern- ment, because it was carried out with 'com- passion', its main interest lay in the fact that, while ruling out a referendum for which M Chirac has been clamouring, he did not rule out the possibility of parliamentary elections before the schedul- ed life of the present parliament with its ab- solute Socialist majority runs out in 1986. This, he said, could be brought about by dissension within the present majority. Clearly what he had in mind was the coming Socialist Party conference in September at which the left wing of the party led by the former minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement is expected to challenge the government on its economic policies.
Such a challenge, which would also be echoed by the Communists, might, M Mit- terrand indicated, be punished by an early dissolution with its predictably dire conse- quences for something like half the present number of Socialist deputies. There is ex- cellent reason for thinking that such an election — early but not too early — might, in the second half of M Mitterrand's presidency, suit him. It is interesting in this connection to note that the Minister of the Interior, M Defferre, is now almost fully occupied in plans for changing France's electoral system so as to introduce a heavy dose of proportional representation into parliamentary elections. This would have the effect of making the French Socialist Party more independent of the Com- munists, but the principal consequence would be to assist the emergence of a cen- trist grouping led by some of M Mitterrand's old cronies from his Fourth Republic days, like M Chaban-Delmas and the two Faures, Maurice and Edgar.
The outcome of such an election held under the new system would be to compen- sate M Mitterrand for the loss of left-wing Socialist and Communist votes by centrist support, and enable him to form a centre- left government. It seems an unlikely possibility at the moment, if only because centrists are thin on the ground these days, but it is one which I have aired before and which M Raymond Aron discussed at some length last week in L'Express. M Aron, by the way, considers that M Mitterrand's choice of economic policy is now irreversi- ble — 'even more so than possibly he himself realises' and that the main question is whether the left-wing Socialists and the Communists can continue to support such a policy for the next two years or longer. He does not think so, and clearly M Mitterrand himself is beginning to have his doubts. Hence the precautionary measures he is already beginning to take, which should culminate in a new electoral law being presented to parliament in a year or so. Meanwhile M Mitterrand has had a chastening lesson in economics, but one which has cost the nation dear.
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