Jospin's first 100 days

By Peter Schwarz

The French Prime Minister has broken all his election promises except one -- which he has turned into its opposite.

Since their surprising election victory at the beginning of June, the French government led by the socialist Lionel Jospin has been constantly presented as a left alternative. An alternative not only to its conservative predecessor under Alain Juppé, but also to right wing social democrats such as Tony Blair in Britain or Gerhard Schröder in Germany. After its first 100 days in office, it is now possible to draw up a balance sheet of the Jospin government.

In this 100 days Jospin has achieved that which brought about his predecessor's failure: he has presented a budget which fulfils the Maastricht criteria. In the coming year, public debt will be under 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Just six months ago this target was seen as virtually unattainable. In April, an internal report by the Ministry of Finance found its way into the press. The report, which stated that the budget deficit would be 3.7% this year and 4.5% the next, was the final straw which lead to the early dissolution of parliament. Cutting the budget deficit to 3% would involve such unpopular measures -- ran the thinking of President Chirac and his Prime Minister Alain Juppé -- that no election win would be possible afterwards. Only early elections could give the government enough room for manoeuvre.

Now Jospin has reached this target without unleashing any great wave of protests. How is this to be explained? Can the Maastricht criteria and a reformist policy in the interests of the working class be reconciled? Or has Jospin simply been able to package his predecessor's policies more successfully?

Jospin's record of broken promises

A glance at the measures taken so far show that the latter is the case. Behind Jospin's left face can be found completely right wing policies. Of all the many promises which ensured his election victory he has broken them all except one -- and that one has been turned into its opposite.

He was hardly in office a week when, at the Amsterdam European Union summit he signed the Stability Pact which he had condemned during the elections as "an absurd concession to the German Bundesbank". This pact pledges all governments to follow a strict savings course. A completely meaningless and non-committal "employment clause" was added to the pact as a fig leaf for Jospin.

Three weeks later the state-controlled Renault company agreed the final shut-down of its plant in Vilvorde, Belgium. In March, Jospin had personally participated in a demonstration against this very threat. Now he claims that he never promised to prevent the closure, merely to ensure that the company checked over its plans one more time. This happened, and they decided the closure was an economic necessity. Since then, Renault has reported exploding profits; net profits have increased tenfold since last year.

The next broken promise affected immigrants, who suffer at the hands of xenophobes and from state harassment. There is no longer any talk about the promised repeal of the racist Aliens Act, which was passed under the arch-conservative Interior Ministers Pasqua and Debré. The Act will stay in force and will only be slightly amended.

Only the sans-papiers were granted a few concessions. Many of these refugees with no regular documentation have been living in France for decades. They constantly face deportation and many have to work illegally under inhuman conditions. Last year, a hunger strike lasting several weeks drew attention to their plight. Theoretically, they now have the possibility of regularising their situation. Practically, they face new persecution at the hands at the authorities.

Of some 85,000 applications submitted to the Prefecture of Police, at most 2,000 have been answered positively. Applicants are repeatedly called to appear at the Prefecture and confronted with new conditions which they cannot possibly fulfil. For example, that they should produce wage slips, rent contracts, proof of payment of social insurance contributions, and also that they should pay over £350 for medical examinations and diverse taxes. In some cases, the police have tried to force the applicants to act as informants, threatening them with deportation if they refuse.

Jospin's last broken promise is over the 35-hour-week with no loss of pay. The introduction of this was not only promised in the socialists election manifesto, but was also the subject of a coalition agreement with the Communist Party and the Greens. In an interview with the newspaper le monde, Jospin has now sounded the retreat: "35 hours work for 39 hours pay", he said, was not his slogan. Such a measure would be "anti-economic". The background to this is the threat made by the employers' organisations to boycott a long-planned meeting with the government and trade unions, if Jospin held fast to his plan.

The privatisation of the largest state-owned companies has been taken up again by Jospin after a short delay, despite the resistance of the work-force. France Télécom was floated on the stock exchange on September 22, the defence firm Thomson-CSF and the insurance company GAN also face sell-off. The privatisation of Aérospatiale and Air France has been postponed by Jospin, but not abandoned.

Taken as a whole, Jospin's economic policies differ from those of his predecessor only cosmetically. He is pursuing a far more rigorous savings policy than the socialist governments under Mitterand. Whereas these governments pegged the rise in public expenditure to the growth of the social product, Jospin wants to tie it to the prices index. This means that the volume of expenditure will decrease.

Le monde comments, "The draft budget for 1998 provides the opportunity for a fundamental re-orientation of socialist budget policies. Unlike the past, they are not determined by Keynsian considerations which justify public expenditure".

In contrast to Juppé, Jospin is striving hard to hide the social injustice of his economic policies. For this reason, he has slightly increased business taxes, but only by £900 million and only for the largest employers which make high profits. At the same time, small savers are being fleeced of some £2.1bn in order to balance out the deficit in the social insurance fund. Even cuts in social spending are presented by Jospin as "social compensation". Thus he has cut off child benefits for 350,000 middle class families, justifying this with the argument that such money must go to those in real need.

Workfare in France

Just one election promise has apparently been kept by Jospin: to create 350,000 state-financed jobs for youth. A law to this end has been passed by parliament. There is quite a rush for these new jobs. In the education field, some 150,000 have applied for 40,000 posts offered.

On closer inspection these measures can be seen to be anything other than a suitable means for overcoming the catastrophic situation which confronts youth. In France, one in four 20-24 year old is unemployed, three times the figure for Germany. Yet not one of these jobs offers a future. They are not combined with education or apprenticeship. They are without exception paid at the legal minimum wage and are limited to five years. A section of the youth will be employed in order to keep an eye on the rest -- as police assistants, probation and education assistants. Others will have to carry out work such as sweeping the parks, cleaning graffiti etc.

The government is pursuing two aims with this programme: firstly, to defuse the socially explosive conditions of misery in the suburbs where for years there have been street battles between youth and the police. Secondly, to promote low-wage work along American lines. Youth are being conditioned to working for hunger wages all their life. They can then be used to crack open wages contracts.

The burden on state finances will be kept within limits. The programme is largely to be financed through re-directing expenditure away from the older unemployed. In addition, unemployment and social security benefits will not be paid to those youth employed.

Jospin's job creation programme is not very different to that proposed by the New Labour government in Britain and the SPD in Germany. Blair is also promising that no one will be without work. From him this sounds more like a threat than a promise.

All talk of Jospin's left wing policies is a myth. Ever since 1995, when Juppé's cuts provoked a three week uprising, the French bourgeoisie has needed a man like Jospin who can secure their rule. The cohabitation with Gaullist President Chirac has to all practical ends tied socialist Prime Minister Jospin into a grand coalition. The bourgeoisie is following his actions with forbearance and good will.

Even the German finance newspaper Handelsblatt -- which is beyond any suspicion of harbouring left wing sympathies -- came to the conclusion in a recent editorial that this was the best solution for France. "If Jospin and Chirac come to blows, or if a majority of the French people rise up against the government, as in the autumn of 1995, a crisis of state cannot be excluded. However, there is really no reason for panic... Chirac and Jospin know that due to their own weaknesses and the long period until the next elections in 2002 they will have to rely on each other for the moment."

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