France: The art of crisis management

A swashbuckling prime minister has to fight on many fronts at once

DOMINIQUE DE VILLEPIN knows a thing or two about crisis management. He was President Jacques Chirac's first chief of staff in 1995, which proved a baptism of fire when France promptly restarted nuclear testing in the south Pacific. Two years later, he advised the president to dissolve parliament in the face of huge street protests, only to see the centre-right lose its parliamentary majority to the Socialists. And in 2003 he was foreign minister when France was vilified in America for its active opposition to the war in Iraq. But even this hardened political fire-fighter, who is now Mr Chirac's prime minister, must be finding the latest outbreaks quite a challenge.

Over the past few weeks, Mr de Villepin has rushed from one drama to the next. No sooner had he dealt with the fallout from Mr Chirac's humiliating decision last month to call home the Clemenceau, a decommissioned, asbestos-laden aircraft-carrier that had been sent to India for scrap, than panic about bird flu broke out in France. Since the discovery of a dead duck carrying the H5N1 virus near Lyons, the disease has spread to a poultry farm, for the first time in Europe. To the indignation of France's vocal farmers, 43 countries have now banned French imports of poultry and foie gras.

Since then, disasters have multiplied. An epidemic of a mosquito-borne disease, chikungunya, has struck the French island of Reunion and led to 77 deaths. Fears of a new wave of anti-Semitism were unleashed after the grotesque kidnap, torture and murder of a Jewish man by a gang in a Paris suburb. Even the merger of two French energy companies announced last weekend by the prime minister, followed by this week's anti-foreign-takeover plans, seemed to be put together in panic ()see page 69. The picture is of a government on the defensive, improvising reactions to events. Mr de Villepin's popularity slumped during February by 11 points, according to a CSA poll, to a lowly 36%.

Plainly, these events are unconnected in any sense other than the political trouble they present. Only two might be called blunders. The return of the Clemenceau was a victory for green activists, who had accused France of exporting toxic waste to the third world. Not true, the government replied: it was not sending "waste" to India, but "war equipment", and so could legally do so even though large amounts of asbestos still had to be stripped out. It was only when the Conseil d'Etat, France's highest administrative court, ruled in February that the hulk was in fact "waste", that Mr Chirac, on the eve of an official visit to India, ordered the ship home.

The chikungunya outbreak also appears to have involved political neglect. Last year, despite a rapidly rising number of cases, the National Institute of Health Surveillance declared that the disease was "not a worrying phenomenon" for public health. As recently as January, Xavier Bertrand, the health minister, described it as "not fatal". Not until last weekend did Mr de Villepin fly off to the island, announcing euro76m ($90m) in aid. The government, said Francois Hollande, the Socialist leader, had shown "intolerable indifference" to the epidemic.

But even the other events reinforce the impression of a government caught off guard. In the case of the energy merger, the underlying principle is unsurprising. Mr de Villepin has made "economic patriotism" his mantra, denouncing hostile takeovers by foreigners at every turn. The difference in the latest case, a merger of Gaz de France and Suez, is the perception of indecent haste. Mr de Villepin approved the deal only after it became clear that Suez was vulnerable to a hostile Italian bid, holding a press conference on a Saturday to make the surprise announcement. Since the deal means going back on a promise not to privatise Gaz de France, the unions see it as a ploy to sell the utility by stealth: a strike has been called next week.

In the case of the abduction and murder of Ilan Halimi, there was frustration among French Jews that it took so much time to recognise its anti-Semitic nature (see box on next page). The public prosecutor initially said that there were no grounds to suspect anti-Semitism. The government, Halimi's uncle told Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, was "afraid of reigniting confrontation with the Muslims." It was Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, who first used the term "anti-Semitism", in parliament. Days later, after pressure for a gesture of solidarity, Mr Chirac and Mr de Villepin were at a memorial service for Halimi in Paris's main synagogue.

The last thing Mr de Villepin needed was the bird-flu scare. But might it provide an opportunity to counter the impression of ill-preparedness? He had, after all, put an emergency ministerial team in place, and ordered vaccinations, before the disease actually arrived. A simulation of a human infection was organised in Lyons. This week, with European Union approval, France began vaccinating geese and ducks in the south-west. During a five-hour visit to the (birdless) Paris agricultural show, Mr de Villepin tucked into as much chicken as he could lay his hands on.

Sometimes, a well-managed crisis can boost a politician's standing--or perhaps provide cover for other unpalatable policies. It cannot harm Mr de Villepin that France's health scares have been grabbing headlines at a time when he is trying to push through parliament a more flexible--but hugely unpopular--new employment contract for those under 26. Resistance to this is fierce, and may account for much of the recent drop in his popularity. A rise in unemployment in January, to 9.6%, the first increase since the prime minister took over last May, has not helped. Next week mass student protests will be staged against the contract.

The trouble is that health scares tend to affect political popularity only when they go wrong. "A badly managed health crisis can destroy a politician, but nobody thanks one for a catastrophe that doesn't happen," says Dominique Reynie, a political scientist at the Sciences-Po university in Paris. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the previous prime minister, never recovered his credibility after thousands died while ministers were on holiday during a heatwave in the summer of 2003. Worse, under the fifth republic, prime ministers have consistently suffered from what is known as the MALeDICTION DE MATIGNON. Once confidence in the polls has been lost, no prime minister has fully recovered--and none has gone on directly to win the presidency.

France's Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, is having March 2006 to fight on many fronts at once.