The business district of La Défense, near Paris, October 14, 2014 (AFP / File / Lionel Bonaventure)
France is preparing for a test event on its ability to realize economic reforms promised its European partners on skirmish background with Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel fired him a Sunday New scratch.
Meanwhile the verdict on its 2015 budget, rejected by Brussels in spring, the French socialist government Wednesday to unveil a plan to “unlock the economy,” which already crystallized opposition.
Merkel considering as “justified” the respite granted by the European Commission to France for the slippage of public finances, found insufficient the reforms at this stage.
“The Commission also stated clearly that what is on the table so far is not enough. That with which I agree,” she told the conservative daily Die Welt.
called “reforms, they are made in France, not to please this or that European leader, but because it is necessary for France,” replied Sunday night the French Minister of Finance , MIchel Sapin.
For its part, the French economist Jean Tirole, Nobel Prize in Economics in 2014, called, from Stockholm, his country to “follow the example” of Germany and Sweden, “who have experienced difficult times and made many reforms.”
“We have to make reforms for people returning to work,” pleaded the proponent of a major overhaul of French job market weighed down by record unemployment rate of 10.4%.
Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives at the chancellery, December 4, 2014 (AFP / File / Tobias Schwarz)
Sunday work , easing access to regulated professions (notaries, lawyers, pharmacists), liberalization of bus transportation, employee savings: the government is off with his bill “on the activity and growth”
<. p> Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Emmanuel Macron, the young Minister of Economy aged 36 who became a symbol of the social-liberal turn of the executive, defends “a text for those who want to work, create, produce, hire our territory. ”
– Law ‘tote’ –
But already the critics are gathering in respect of a qualified law “catch-all” with the number of the party Socialist (PS), Jean-Christophe Cambadélis.
iconic measurement, the extension of Sunday work or in the evening, with very strict rules in France, is also one of the most controversial.
The government plans notably to develop in tourism and free trade, the creation of “international tourist areas” in which the work will be possible on Sundays and in the evening until midnight.
He hopes a boost for employment in an ever top tourist destination in the world. But the ulcer every union project, and Paris, the first question, the municipal team left is hostile
A poll released Friday demonstrates the sensitivity of the subject. Almost two thirds of the French ( 62%) say it supported the opening of shops on Sundays, but 60% balk at the idea of working themselves that day, except major counterparties.
Notaries, bailiffs, lawyers, pharmacists: regulated professions are also very lifts against the will power to reform their sectors. After an unprecedented strike late September, they plan to collect 50,000 protesters on Wednesday to demand the withdrawal of the project. UNAPL the federation, bringing together all professionals, called to the streets on January 22 for the start of the review of the law to the National Assembly.
The government Valls has only a narrow majority in the Assembly where the slingers of the left wing of the PS, having abstained on the vote on the budget, this time threatening to vote against the Macron law.
One of the figures of the Left Party, Senator Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, on Saturday called socialist MPs to reject a text that is “a challenge to all the historic battles of the left”.
The Emmanuel Macron reform plan comes at a time of particularly high tension that the government is at loggerheads with employers, whom he accuses of sabotage by outbidding his perpetual relief in corporate expense policy in hopes of boosting employment and investment.
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