France. The price of unexpected success

The prime minister may have saved his skin by doing better than expected at promoting change-but voters are still not impressed

WHEN President Jacques Chirac unexpectedly retained Jean-Pierre Raffarin as his prime minister, despite this year's dismal round of election results, savvy voters felt a game was being played: Mr Raffarin's role was to take the rap for some tough measures that lay ahead. Widespread unrest over a reform of public-health insurance and a move to privatise the electricity utility was widely expected. The unions would take to the streets. Public services would be paralysed. All this confirmed the view that Mr Raffarin was being used as a fall-guy.

Yet as France's parliamentary year ended this week, Mr Raffarin has several grounds for satisfaction. He has survived a vote of confidence. He has also just passed one clutch of reforms, and unveiled a fresh round for the autumn. Has his last-ditch effort to keep his job paid off?

Against the odds, the government has pulled off three important initiatives. The first is a law to turn Electricite de France, a nest of Communist-backed unionism, into a public company. Although workers will retain their civil-service perks, this opens the way for partial privatisation. The government insists that it will keep a 70% stake, but similar promises have been disregarded in the past. Given the symbolism of EDF, whose powerful unions have petrified previous governments, this change in itself is no small achievement.

Second, the government has passed a law to prop up France's public health-insurance system. Though health care is first-class, costs are out of control. The French are second only to the Americans in popping pills, and spend 9% of GDP on health, second in Europe only to Germany. This year, France's public-health fund deficit is expected to top €13 billion ($15.7 billion).

The reform stops short of a radical overhaul. Franois Bayrou, a centrist politician, dismisses it as a reformette. Yet it nevertheless introduces important principles that have long been resisted by politicians and doctors. These include an up-front, non-reimbursable charge (initially one euro) for consulting a doctor; the introduction of computerised and shared medical records, to cut down on duplicated testing and to help diagnoses; and the requirement to be registered with a single family doctor, who will act as a gatekeeper for specialist consultations. Such changes may appear simple common sense, but in France's liberal medical world they are regarded as big infringements on individual freedom. Hoped-for efficiency gains, if achieved, will be accompanied by an increase in social charges to help to control the deficit.

The third reform, guillotined through parliament this week to howls of protest from the opposition Socialist Party - a move which in itself triggered the vote of confidence - decentralises a bit of the civil service. The law devolves certain responsibilities, including national roads, most ports and airports, certain social-housing funds and training schemes, and technical secondary-school employees and caretakers. Some 130,000 civil servants will be transferred to local authorities. The government says it wants to rationalise a labyrinthine public service. It also calculates that it will be less difficult to shed bureaucratic jobs in future if they are not all centrally based.

All of which led Mr Raffarin, flush with his successes, to claim this week that it had been “a great year of reform for France”. The health reform in particular, he added, showed that it was possible to modernise France without provoking a choc social. In a bid to reassert authority, he unveiled a fresh burst of reforms for the autumn.

On the labour market, the unemployed will be given incentives and help to find work, including the possibility of benefit cut-offs; discussions will re-open on ways to make the 35-hour week more flexible. On the public service, there will be a reform to ensure that basic trains and other public services operate during strikes, to avoid the habitual paralysis; some 10,000 civil-service jobs will be cut. On education, research will get a big cash injection, while secondary schooling will be reformed. In short, Mr Raffarin seemed to say, he has life left in him yet. Indeed, the man whom many consider a caretaker, has now lasted longer as prime minister than both Alain Juppe, in 1995-1997, and Mr Chirac's most recent term, in 1986-1988.

All the same, Mr Raffarin can scarcely be complacent. His confidence rating has sunk from a high of 64% in 2002 to just 26% today. Worse, according to the latest monthly popularity ranking from IFOP, a pollster, he ranks a miserable number 32 - below both the Communist and the Trotskyite leaders. A majority of deputies in the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) have now swung behind Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious finance minister, for the vacant job as its new boss.

This weakness is partly explained by Mr Raffarin's unpopular reforms. But it also undermines their impact: the prime minister pushes through important reforms with one hand, while handing out concessions to special-interest groups - tobacco sellers, research scientists, part-time theatre technicians - with the other.

Mr Raffarin may have secured his job for the autumn. He certainly reckons on keeping it longer: he has started to plan a campaign for a yes vote in the French referendum on the European constitution, due to be held in late 2005. But the more restless that UMP deputies become, the more his lack of popularity, and authority, will be a problem. If the president keeps him on, it will probably be because - for now - he has no acceptable alternative.

Article looks at the French government, which is deeply unpopular, but nevertheless, concludes that it has succeeded in pushing through some difficult reforms in the last year and Prime Minister Raffarin may survive for a while longer.

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