How the French have clung on to their August holiday shutdown

Times

3 days ago

With Parisians out of town and the streets abandoned to tourists, François Bayrou is cutting a lonely figure this week on the first floor of the near-empty Hôtel de Matignon, the Left Bank residence of the prime minister.
Bayrou, 74, said he is making a point: France's economic woes, driven by soaring state debt, are too grave for him to leave his desk and join the great August exodus. He says it is time for the French to realise they must work harder.
In the midst of la torpeur estivale, the period of high summer shutdown that involves 40 per cent of businesses being closed, Bayrou's gesture has prompted mockery.
Faithful to tradition, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron are resting at Fort de Brégançon, the presidential retreat on the Mediterranean. Around the coasts and inland, ministers are at their secondary residences, deep into what they invariably call 'vacances studieuses' [studious holidays], preparing for 'la rentrée', the great return to work, later in the month.
Bayrou, who is also mayor of the town of Pau, has pleaded with the French to wake up to the debt-driven disaster that he says will befall the country within weeks if they fail to heed his call for belt-tightening and longer working hours.
He is trying to get their attention with a series of YouTube videos, but his odd mid-holiday homilies, in which he wears a white shirt and dark tie in his book-lined Paris office, have fallen on deaf ears.
On beaches, campsites and booming 'green holiday' villages, his claim that 'never has France found itself in such a great crisis and such political difficulty' is coming over as an affront to the holidaymaker's primary duty: 'se ressourcer' [recharging the batteries]. Among changes, Bayrou said he aims to scrap two bank holidays.
'Who is going to listen to that old boomer banging on?' was a typical comment in a village store in the sun-scorched Cévennes hills this week.
Recharging has been at the heart of the French devotion to the summer break since the creation of two weeks of paid leave for all workers in 1936.
The great getaway reached a peak in the late 20th century after the congés payés, or paid holidays, were expanded to five weeks in 1982, and the ritual has persisted. Efforts by businesses and governments to persuade people to stagger breaks and reduce their summer vacation have had some impact. The average summer holiday is down to two weeks and nearly 40 per cent are now juilletistes (July people) compared with 60 per cent aoûtiens, those who prefer August.
This week, Assumption Day on August 15 marks the peak of the annual slowdown, with more than 55 per cent of the population away from home. Nearly 70 per cent are staying in France, which is understandable given that the country's enviable attractions make it the world's biggest destination for foreign tourists.
The Germans, British and other northern neighbours enjoy about the same annual leave but take shorter summer breaks and more often abroad. The Italians, Spanish and other southern Europeans share France's summer heat exodus but not the extent of its switch-off. The shutdown affects smaller factories, shops and services except businesses serving tourists. These are in Paris and other visitor haunts, mainly on the coasts and the south.
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From Paris through to the provinces, streets are quiet, and 'annual closure' signs are displayed in the windows of bakeries, cafés and shops. Traffic is light and state services such as post offices and job centres are near empty.
Experts argue that the slowdown damages the economy given the higher summer output of neighbouring countries, but others claim that the tradition of long summer holidays boosts productivity because of the benefits to mental and physical health.
Recent laws, such as the 2017 'right to disconnect' from work communications, are part of this thinking.
With a rapid rise in workers suffering from burnout, some experts are worrying whether the French, who already spend less time at work than other Europeans, need to take more holiday, not less. 'Three weeks of holiday are not always enough to recharge the batteries,' said a headline in Le Point news magazine.
The prime minister said this week that he is losing patience with his compatriots' notion of the work-life balance. Talking of his call for public suggestions on which bank holidays to scrap, he told Le Figaro newspaper: 'I laugh when people propose August 15 — in other words, the only one when everyone is already on holiday.'