French PM's proposal to scrap public holidays 'psychologically not a good idea', expert says

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00:00For more on the government plans, we can bring in Paul Smith, Professor of French and Francophone

00:05Studies at Nottingham University. Paul, it's a great pleasure to have you with us on the

00:09programme as always. First, this news conference by Bayrou was meant to shore up support for the

00:15budget, but is it likely to achieve that as things currently stand?

00:20Well, it was certainly another political grenade. We weren't expecting this, or if anybody thinks

00:26they were expecting it, then they weren't talking about it earlier today. This thing is happening

00:31in France. The rentrée politique is getting underway. And what Bayrou was trying to do is

00:36really to pull the rug from under the feet of the left. We knew that there's, your report

00:43mentioned the protest movement, the idea of blocking the country, bringing the country

00:47to a standstill on the 10th of September. And then there was talk of a no confidence vote

00:52using Article 49.2, coming along towards the end of September, around about the 23rd.

00:58So what Bayrou has done is really try to seize the initiative, and it's going to use the next

01:04two weeks to really try and put pressure on the political parties via talking to the French people

01:11to try and shore himself up using this, not so much a confidence vote, it's actually the idea of,

01:17in French parlance, literary translators engaging his responsibility, but it's a confidence vote,

01:24which the calculations for that are still a little bit complicated.

01:29So the plan is divided into two phases, a plan to stop the debt, and a plan to advance production.

01:36Explain to us what he means by this and how he plans to carry this out.

01:39Well, his ideas are that he basically to freeze benefits and keep them at the same level rather

01:51than index linking them, and then also to raise taxes or think about ways of raising taxes,

01:58but also various other schemes, such as the idea of abolishing a couple of public holidays.

02:05But what's been very interesting and has tended to be overlooked, and one can understand why,

02:09is that he's talked about this idea of a budget that would be negotiated. Of course, he doesn't

02:14really, he's not really in a position to negotiate with the parties, and they're unlikely to want to

02:20negotiate in a particularly productive way. But certainly it's the idea of really just basically

02:28not the state shutting down, that's not what's going to happen, but the idea of freezing

02:32where we are in order to try to bring French public debt back under control.

02:37But a 44 billion euro slash in public spending is an enormous amount. Where exactly are they

02:44proposing these cuts come from? Well, it will come from particularly freezing benefits. I mean,

02:51the benefit, the welfare budget in France is an enormous budget, but there will be cuts across the

03:00board. There's some talk also of raising taxes for the more well-off, but exactly how that's going

03:07to happen and where it's going to happen is still a little bit unclear. I mean, there is a kind of a

03:13road map that was outlined in July. But again, that's going to have to be negotiated, and it depends where

03:21he can get support from in order for that to get through.

03:25Now, you brushed upon this very briefly a little earlier, but I'd like to expand on it a little bit.

03:30The fact that the slash in public deficit also includes the proposed elimination of two public

03:36holidays. Bayrou's rationale is that the nation must work more so that the activity of the country as a

03:43whole increases over time. It's not going to go well down with the French public, I imagine. But

03:50is this logic sound in your opinion? I mean, will this really make a difference?

03:56It'll make a very small difference. I think that the saving, the figures that I've seen are around

04:01about 4.2 billion euros. I think that psychologically, it's not a good idea,

04:08to be honest. Or, I mean, he says it's negotiable. I was very surprised that Easter Monday was one of

04:17the public holidays he was suggesting doing away with. Because it's, just to explain to your viewers

04:24who don't know, in France, apart from Easter Monday and Pentecost, public holidays fall on the day they

04:33fall. It's not like in Britain, where we move the public holidays to Monday, so you get a long weekend,

04:38we're having one today. Today was a public holiday in the UK. In France, it always happens on the day.

04:43But Easter is one of those that actually guarantees you a long weekend, so you get a three-day run at

04:48it. One can kind of see the logic behind, there are a lot of public holidays in May, maybe the 8th of

04:54May, and perhaps the idea of doing as we do in the UK, which is to bundle up all of the commemoration

05:00into a public holiday. We don't have a public holiday in the UK, but in France, having a public holiday

05:05on the 11th of November. But the problem is that this is very much the headline, that people are

05:11seeing that, and the popularity of it. I mean, there have been various different opinion polls

05:16saying that, you know, there are something like 80% of French people oppose that. It depends which

05:21opinion poll you look at. It's quite interesting that readers of Le Figaro are 40% in favour of this sort

05:25of idea. But it's the kind of part of the policy that people will latch on to, and they will remember.

05:34And it will push the other much more complicated, if you like, and perhaps needful aspects of the

05:44reform, of the changes, into the background. And that's what's going to be really, really going to

05:49be problematic for Bayhu to overcome in the next two weeks, when he tries to persuade the French

05:54public, and to persuade particularly the parties closer to him politically, that this needs to be

06:00done. And these announcements come, of course, I made a backdrop of international tensions and

06:06military tensions as well, because indeed, President Macron has also indeed called for a boost in

06:11defence spending as well. Yes, absolutely. I mean, it's very difficult to see. I mean,

06:17one of the other things is that cuts will come across the board. But is that going to happen

06:23to defence as well? Is the defence budget going to be ring-fenced? Or is every single ministry going

06:30to be asked to find economies, including the defence budget? So all of these aspects need to be looked at

06:38very closely. And as you say, the cost of defence is enormous. But as Bayhu himself has pointed out,

06:44servicing the debt, French public debt is actually a bigger budget now annually than the education

06:52budget and the defence budget. So there are a lot of very complicated issues in the background here.

06:59Paul, very interesting to hear your thoughts. Thank you so much for breaking that down for us,

07:03and we appreciate your time. Thank you.

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