France seethes

Your typical French student has never met a demonstration he didn't like. It's like a rite of passage that each generation goes through; at some point, you have to take part in an anti-government protest, so you can have something to tell your grandchildren.

For this year's class, union protests against government pension reforms are the call to arms. The government has legislated that the earliest age at which workers can get pensions is 62, with full pensions not coming until 67. The French, who have come to attach a very high value to their leisure time, and look forward to their retirements, are not amused.

The strikers have blockaded refineries and engaged in the French custom of 'snails' - highway motorcades that move at a slug's pace, tying up traffic for kilometres. Once the students came out in support of the strikes, the streets filled and the schools emptied. The pressure on the government became intense.

Heavy burden

Structurally, France faces the same problem as all its neighbours. Public pensions were instituted in an age of stable population growth and shorter lifespans. Thanks to improved health care, people now live longer. This means retired people spend more years living off the labour of the active workforce. But because of declining fertility - another by-product of improved living standards - that workforce will only diminish.

A growing elderly cohort will place a heavy burden on the economically active population. To support its pension system, the French government will either have to raise taxes, cut benefits, or get more people into the workforce.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has a vision of making France more business-friendly, so tax hikes are out of the question. So that leaves either benefit cuts, or boosting the workforce.

The simplest way to increase the size of the working population is by importing workers. But the French are not so keen on immigration. After all, President Sarkozy ran into little opposition when he recently rounded up gypsies and sent them to Eastern Europe, and the country has a significant far-right political movement.

So there is little other option but to cut benefits, and make people stay economically active for longer. Yet, while most French people appear ready to accept that the pension system will need to be reformed eventually, they're not sure they want this president to do it.

The French traditionally like their presidents to maintain a studied decorum in public. Oh sure, in private they can behave like buffoons (Jacques Chirac) or despots (François Mitterrand). But they mustn't descend to the sort of crassness the French detect in the Anglo democracies, where presidents whine on Oprah and former prime ministers tell us far more than we really wanted to know about their supposedly hot ('No, really!') wives.

President Sarkozy is just the opposite. Hyperactive, image-conscious, preoccupied with style and celebrity when his wife left him he ran out and replaced her with a model. The French now have as their first lady, a former pin-up girl. Okay, she also sings, but do a Google image search, and you'll get the idea: the Pope didn't want to meet her for fear the Italian press would juxtapose him with nude pics.

Economic policy shift

So President Sarkozy is staking his political future on the success of his pension changes. He hopes to deliver the kind of economic policy shift that has eluded previous French presidents, and then campaign on that platform in the 2012 presidential elections. He maintains that the reform will reduce the deficit over the long term, and lead to higher economic growth in the short term.

The first claim seems obvious, but the second is more debatable. Still, he's all in on this bet. The Government is pushing through the legislation. The barricades are manned. Sit back and watch the action because the coming week will reveal if the unions are up to a counter-attack.

John Rapley is president of CaPRI (the Caribbean Policy Research Institute), an independent think tank affiliated with the University of the West Indies. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com