5 days ago
Macron's plea to his countrymen to work harder has backfired
Every August, it is traditional in Britain for a politician to be mercilessly criticised for going on holiday (especially somewhere foreign and sunny and fun) rather than toiling away in Whitehall. In France, the precise opposite holds. The French premier, François Bayrou, has very publicly remained at his desk in Paris this month. He was hoping his example might encourage his compatriots to cut back their downtime, given the magnitude of their nation's debt crisis. Instead, M. Bayrou has been roundly, sincerely and angrily mocked for neglecting to take it easy on the beach.
Friday marks the high (or low, from M. Bayrou's perspective) point of the annual French summer shutdown, la torpeur estivale, when 40 per cent of businesses close and the workforce disappears to the coast and countryside for three or four weeks to recharge its batteries. This weekend, an astounding 55 per cent of the French population will be away from home, most of them in their mother country. La rentrée, the big return to work, is still a fortnight away.
Much, rightly, is made of the UK's looming fiscal crisis, as the national debt to GDP ratio stands at about 96 per cent. The equivalent figure for France is 113 per cent. So M. Bayrou is of course correct in exhorting his countrymen to knuckle down, nice weather notwithstanding. Bonne chance avec ça! The odds are stacked against him.
• How the French have clung on to their August holiday shutdown
The French enjoy a minimum of 25 days paid holiday a year, plus 11 national bank holidays and some extra local ones, plus the 'right to disconnect' and not work out of hours, plus the chance to accrue even more days off (the so-called réduction du temps de travail) if they exceed the mandated 35 hours work a week. As the virulent protests against raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 showed, these privileges, unaffordable as they may be, will not be surrendered lightly.
