‘Welfare state chauvinism’, pension reform and Catholic Church’s office for relations with Islam: What I’ve learned during a week in France

In the Parliament...

The French embassy in Zagreb brought four of us journos from Croatia for a week in Paris in December. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, in certain ways it was: we had tons of rendez-vous with people from various institutions. It was all off the record though. But, in no particular order, here’s what I’ve learned:

“Sarkozy said” was the phrase used by almost everyone we talked to. “God and Sarkozy”, said one guy.

35-hour week is mainly a myth, at least that’s what the people working in the state administration told us. We happened to be at the Foreign Ministry at 7 p.m. one evening and the offices were full of people. A friend of mine claimed it was the French “trying to crank out a 35-hour day and take the rest of the week off”. But, apparently, there’s too much work and too few people, so they work overtime all the time. Getting paid for the overtime is out of the question. They do get free days instead, but the boss can prevent them from using them simply by citing the “needs of the service”.

In France it is very uncommon for the workers to work for months without being paid, unlike Croatia where it happens often. It’s more common that they don’t get paid for overtime, especially in small companies, and it’s difficult to use all the vacation they have a right to.

The French diplomacy is an impressive undertaking. Every day their PR service produces a daily briefing for their journalists, listing the most important events from around the world and the French positions on them. Three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Thursday – this is done by e-mail, and twice a week – Tuesday and Friday – in a press conference. The PR department thinks it’s important to communicate with journalists every day. Obviously, being a permanent member of the Security Council they have to have an official position on everything, but in Croatia it’s sometimes impossible to find out why our diplomacy voted in a certain way even after the fact.

Welfare State Chauvinism is a term that could be used for the theory that the current European social model can be at least partially saved only if the social rights are reserved for the domestic inhabitants, says Pascal Perrineau, professor at the Sciences Po Paris and the director of CEVIPOF.

The market at Saint Denis

The banlieu of Saint Denis has the biggest proportion of immigrants of all Parisian suburbs – people from more than 110 nationalities apparently live there, immigrants make 25 to 30 percent of inhabitants. But, most interesting is that the City Council is trying to trick the system to give some kind of a right to vote to foreigners, even if they’re not EU citizens. They’ve established a Conseil consultatif des citoyens étrangers. People are nominated into it by the parties based on the results of the vote in the elections for the City council. The two councils then hold their sessions together, but since the foreigners are not allowed to speak at sessions, if one of them wants to speak, the session is officially stopped for the time of the speech, and it resumes afterward.

The mission of the public France Télévisions is to produce programs that public could appreciate, but doesn’t know it would appreciate. So, it tries to give the viewers new ideas, instead of playing to what the audience thinks it wants. Around 11.000 people work for France Télé, 4000 of them journalists, and about a thousand work abroad. The TVs produce news only, entertainment is done in external production. Unlike the Croatian TV, which wishes itself a separate sports channel, there are no such ideas at France Télé. There’s also no football – it’s just too expensive.

The French unions claim they were wrongfully accused of being against raising the pension age from 60 to 62 (and thus their members being portrayed as lazy). The problem for them was that it put all the burden to the poorest and most vulnerable workers. Before the reform, to get a pension you had to have 60 years of age and you had to have worked for 41 year. The government has now decided you needed to be 62 years old and have worked for 41 year. This means that someone who started working at the age of 18, until now had to work for 42 years before retiring, and now they’ll have to work for 44 years. Someone who started working at the age of 22, had to work until the age of 63 in the old system as well, so for them, nothing will change. For the unions, this means that the state is asking more from those who didn’t go to school, who had fewer chances in life, who earned less and worked in harder, manual jobs. From the others, it demands nothing. It’s in effect asking the poor to pay for the pensions of the wealthy, they say.

Catholic Church in France has an office for relations with Islam since 1973, as well as a person for relations with Islam in each of 65 dioceses in France. The Church also has departments for relations with the Jews, Buddhists and other religions. The most important goal of the department is to help people learn how to live together in a secular society, so “not religion, but a human connection”.

Question Time in French Parliament is a lively affair. There’s booing, and clapping, and shouting, just like in the British House of Commons. I’m thinking it wouldn’t be bad if our parliament introduced it on a weekly basis as well, as it would give our politicians a bit more practice in explaining politics to the electorate.

Deaf applause. I’ve never seen it until we saw a big group of deaf people in front of the French Parliament protesting introduction of early hearing tests for babies. There was a lot of noise from drums, but their clapping was silent: they just waved their hands in the air.