[Mb-civic] France's global retreat - Boston Globe Editorial

[William Swiggard]

  France's global retreat

April 13, 2006  |  Editorial  |  The Boston Globe

WHEN PRIME MINISTER Dominique de Villepin of France announced Monday he 
was rescinding a modest labor reform law intended to increase employment 
for disadvantaged youth, he lamented that the law ''was not understood 
by everyone, I am sorry to say." This was the remark of an unelected 
mandarin who, after a spectacular failure of leadership, refuses to take 
responsibility for his role in making a bad situation worse.

The bad situation is an unemployment rate that stands at 22 percent for 
all French youth and double that rate for the alienated descendants of 
immigrants in high-rise ghettos who rioted last fall.

This ominous threat to France's future is a result of the nation's 
stubborn resistance to changes that are inevitable.

Understandable as it may be that large portions of French society would 
like to preserve a social contract that guaranteed generous benefits and 
job security for those who already had jobs, France does not have the 
option of withdrawing from a global economy that becomes more and more 
competitive every day. Sooner or later, the forces that clashed over 
Villepin's botched labor reform will have to compromise and cooperate in 
liberalizing France's labor markets and reducing, at least somewhat, 
social benefits acquired through years of heroic struggle.

The aim of such compromises should not be to dismantle the hard-won 
guarantees of a decent standard of living for everyone in France but, on 
the contrary, to preserve the possibility of capitalism with a human face.

This is where Villepin's failure of leadership comes in -- a failure 
abetted by his mentor, President Jacques Chirac. Instead of conducting a 
public education campaign to build support for the plan, Villepin 
steamrolled his labor reform through the National Assembly in a session 
held at 2 o'clock in the morning. He made no effort to consult with 
French unions or student associations about a reform meant to make it 
easier for young workers to enter the labor force for the first time.

Villepin and Chirac acted as though they had learned nothing from the 
government's failure last summer to gain a ''yes" vote for the draft of 
a European Union constitution. They seemed unaware of the public's 
manifest distrust of the government and of the popular misconception 
that France may somehow be able to subtract itself from the global economy.

The longer it takes for France to adapt to contemporary realities, the 
more painful the process of adaptation will be. France needs leaders who 
are able to begin a dialogue with society about the ineluctability of 
change and about the most humane ways of accomplishing that change.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/04/13/frances_global_retreat/
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