Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [19]
Cross Channel, Julien Barnes (1997) – This is a witty collection of key moments in shared Anglo-French history – from Joan of Arc to a trip via Eurostar from London to Paris – by one of Britain’s most talented novelists.
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For the most part Jospin and his government continued to enjoy the electorate’s approval, thanks largely to a recovery in economic growth and the introduction of a 35-hour working week, which created thousands of (primarily part-time) jobs. But this period of cohabitation, the longest-lasting government in the history of the Fifth Republic, ended in May 2002 when Chirac was returned to the presidency for a second five-year term with 82% of the vote. This reflected less Chirac’s popularity than the fear of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the right-wing Front National, who had garnered nearly 17% of the first round of voting against Chirac’s 20%.
Chirac appointed Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a popular regional politician, as prime minister and pledged to lower taxes with declining revenues from a sluggish economy. But in May 2005 the electorate handed Chirac an embarrassing defeat when it overwhelmingly rejected, by referendum, the international treaty that was to create a constitution for the EU.
In the autumn of the same year riots broke out in Paris’ cités, the enormous housing estates or projects encircling the capital, home to a dispossessed population of mostly blacks and Muslims. In some of the worst violence seen since WWII, there thankfully was no deaths but 3000 arrests and millions of euros in property damage. Parisians began to talk about and debate ethnic origin and affirmative action but this remained essentially a problem ‘out there’ in the banlieues (suburbs).
The trouble became more central – both literally and figuratively – in March 2006 after parliament passed the controversial Contrat de Première Embauche (CPE; First Employment Contract). Supporters argued that the plan would reduce unemployment by 20% while detractors said it would encourage a regular turnover of cut-rate staff and not allow young people to build careers. The majority of the nation’s universities went on strike, workers and students mobilised and 1.5 million protesters took to the streets nationwide. In Paris, demonstrators torched cars and clashed with police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. The government decided to withdraw the CPE altogether later in 2006.
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PARIS TODAY
With this backdrop it came as no surprise that Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, President Chirac’s loyal henchman and heir apparent who had never even been elected to public office, did not even make it to the first post in the national elections of spring 2007. Instead, the get-tough Interior Minister Nicolas ‘Sarko’ Sarkozy, who famously fanned the flames during the 2005 race riots by calling the rioters racaille (rabble or riffraff) and whose loyalty to Chirac seemed to blow with the prevailing wind, stood as the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) candidate against Socialist Ségolène ‘Ségo’ Royal, who appeared to be the left’s only hope of ending a dozen years of right-wing incumbency. Neither candidate received an absolute majority in the first round of voting but in the second Sarkozy took 53% of the popular vote.
In his first year as president, Sarkozy succeeded where his predecessors failed in getting unions and employee groups to compromise on benefits and saw the national unemployment rate fall to 7.5%, the lowest level in more than two decades. But many of even his staunchest supporters were less than impressed with his performance and his popularity in the polls one year on stood at less than 40% (against 67% just after the May 2007 election). That’s partly due to what the French now calling