France. Jacques Chirac and the politics of the past

The perpetual president and his perennial promises

WITH all the vigour and resolve of the freshly elected, President Jacques Chirac kicked off the annual ritual of new year speeches on fine form. “France must be on the offensive,” he declared. “We must act with determination for strong and lasting growth”; and “we must act urgently” to combat unemployment and “reinforce our social cohesion”. Just the sort of talk needed to inspire the team and to set France up “for the next ten years”, as Mr Chirac added. Except that this president is not freshly elected at all. Next May, he will mark ten years in power, the longest of any current leader among G8 countries. And the longer he serves, the more his promises sound wearily familiar - and thin.

Recall Mr Chirac's first pledges. “I will engage all my force to restore the cohesion of France,” he promised at his inauguration in 1995. “Employment will be my preoccupation at all times.” During the campaign he deplored the country's “social fracture”, promised to make “combating unemployment an absolute priority”, and vowed to restore “healthy and lasting growth”. In short, he made much the same promises that he is making now.

Yet ten years on, French unemployment still nudges 10%, barely below the rate of 11.4% that he inherited. Economic growth, at a yearly rate of 1.9% in the third quarter of 2004, is little faster than 1.8% in 1995. Public finances remain squeezed; the “social fracture” still preoccupies France. Little wonder that Mr Chirac is not planning any grand ceremony to celebrate his tenth anniversary.

To be fair, the centre-right Mr Chirac has spent half his time in office with a left-wing government, with which he has often disagreed. Lionel Jospin was the Socialist prime minister in the years of cohabitation, in 1997-2002. That was when such Socialist policies as the 35-hour week, which impeded job creation, came in. Yet it still leaves Mr Chirac's five other years. Why does he have so little to boast about?

An attempt in 1995-97 to push through ambitious reforms, under the prime ministership of Alain Juppe, was thwarted by paralysing national strikes. Stung by that experience, the effort since 2002, under Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has been less ambitious - and so, perhaps, more successful. Partial reforms of public pensions and state health insurance have been passed, aimed at rescuing both systems from unsustainable deficits. Each was necessary, if controversial. By July, for instance, patients who wish to get full reimbursement of medical costs must register with a single family doctor, who will act as a gatekeeper to (more expensive) specialist consultants. This month they have started paying a non-refundable contribution whenever they see a doctor.

Yet these two reforms aside, the rest of the balance-sheet is uneven at best. Mr Chirac has made the 35-hour week a bit more flexible, and promises further adjustments; yet he has also promised that “the legal working week is not, and will not be, brought into question.” Payroll charges on low-paying jobs have been cut, but only as compensation for the extra cost of the 35-hour week. A central part of Mr Chirac's manifesto in 2002 was to cut income taxes by a third; so far, he has managed just 10%, and more cuts will be hard for his finance minister, Herve Gaymard, to make, given the strained public finances.

Nor is there much evidence of reforming ambition for the rest of Mr Chirac's term. Although his new year speeches were packed with detailed policy ideas, from the introduction of class-action lawsuits to the establishment of a state agency to promote innovation, they glossed over the two biggest drags on the economy: an overregulated labour market, and an over-heavy state. This omission is partly due to the political calendar. With a referendum on the European Union constitution likely in June, nothing controversial can be expected beforehand. Mr Raffarin, whose tenure in his own job is uncertain, has said that painful reforms are now behind him. But the cautious policy mix also reflects Mr Chirac's view that the French model is not really broken at all.

Instead, in an unapologetic nod to a dirigiste era, he has pledged to put some €2 billion ($2.6 billion) between now and 2007 into grands projets of the sort that France launched in the 1970s in aerospace and energy. “Our responsibility is to launch today the Airbus or Ariane programmes of tomorrow,” he said. Ignoring the conclusions of a recent study led by Michel Camdessus, a former head of the IMF, the president considers the French statist model to be in need of fine-tuning, not a radical overhaul.

That Mr Chirac does not want to dwell too much on his ten-year anniversary must, all the same, reflect uncertainty about his achievements. His plan seems to be to keep the electorate's gaze fixed on the future, even beyond the end of his mandate. He referred twice last week to his plans “for the next ten years”. He has promised a referendum on Turkish entry into the EU “in ten to 15 years' time”. In short, this 72-year-old seems seriously to be considering running in 2007 for another five-year term - which would carry the not incidental benefit of extending his immunity from prosecution for political corruption. Whether he runs will depend first on whether he wins the referendum; and, second, on the ability of Nicolas Sarkozy, his chief rival on the right and boss of the ruling UMP party, to sustain the popularity he enjoyed until he left the government late last year.

Elections these days may be won more on promises than records. But the politics of promises is a delicate art. The longer Mr Chirac serves, the more strained the credibility of his pledges. This is not lost on the voters. A tireless globe-trotter, he may remain popular for his foreign policy, where he is seen as a dignified defender of his country's gloire. But his overall popularity has slumped, says TNS-Sofres, from an approval rating of 64% when he took office in 1995 to only 41% today. “Ten years is enough,” said an editorial in the left-leaning Liberation this week: “And we're not going to take ten more.”

Articles looks at the first ten years of Jacques Chirac as the President of France and looks to the future.

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