FRANCE BATTLE TO UNDERSTAND BANKS AND BANLIEUES / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENT & ANALYSIS ( VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

October 7, 2011 10:41 pm

France’s battle to understand banks and banlieues

By Christopher Caldwell



This was supposed to be the weekend when the French centre-left got to choose the most powerful politician in Europe. The Parti Socialiste has always been blessed with daring programmes, dashing politicians and dauntless militants. But since François Mitterrand left power, they have kept losing presidential elections. Inspired by the US Democratic primaries in 2008, which sent Barack Obama to the White House, they decided to reform the party not from within but from without. On Sunday, any Frenchman who pays a euro, shows a piece of identification and signs a statement swearing that he shares the “values of the left and of the Republic” will be able to vote in the first round of France’s first-ever primaries. Given the unpopularity of Nicolas Sarkozy, it appeared until recently that that would be the last real obstacle facing the Socialist nominee.

Things have not worked out according to plan. Three years ago, Lille mayor Martine Aubry beat recent presidential candidate Ségolène Royal to become party leader in a campaign marred by vote fraud. The centrist candidate who was going to allow the Socialists to walk into the Elysée Palace, former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, got arrested in New York on charges that were later dropped. Today the leaders of the presidential pack include Ms Aubry and Ms Royal along with François Hollande, formerly head of the party and formerly Ms Royal’s common-law husband. A process meant to rejuvenate the party has produced a battle between its old warhorses, the Chernomyrdins and Andropovs of French social democracy.


During the candidates’ final televised debate in Paris on Wednesday, one had the impression of viewing an old VCR cassette from the archives. This was to be the session devoted to social problems. The last 20 minutes circled around a study sponsored by the Institut Montaigne and carried out by the sociologist Gilles Képel. It showed the growing role of Islam in shaping the identity of young people in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two banlieues (or suburbs) at the centre of a week of rioting in 2005. Mosque attendance was far higher than previously reported, the study showed, and the demand for halal was up.


“People” – if you mean non-politicians – have known this for a long time. Religion is a more important part of French Muslim life than of French non-Muslim life. A survey of 70,000 people by the French Institute of Public Opinion last summer found that 71 per cent of Muslims practise Ramadan. By contrast, Le Figaro found a few years ago that 45 per cent of self-described Catholics in France cannot say what Easter celebrates.


The Institut’s study confirmed the intuitions of almost every Frenchman sitting on a barstool and contradicted the protests of almost every Frenchman sitting in the cabinet. Aside from Manuel Valls, the dynamic mayor of Évry who stands little chance of winning on Sunday, none of the candidates in the debate connected their policies to the world as French voters understand it. One of them, Arnaud Montebourg, even suggested that France’s government had “abandoned” the suburbs when it has, in fact, spent hundreds of billions of euros on the problem. A moderator even interrupted him, blurting out: “But we’ve tried everything.” If people are turning to religion (which few French politicians understand) it must be because they are poor and unemployed (problems they think they understand). Rather than find a solution to a problem, Mr Montebourg is recasting the problem to fit the solutions to hand.


Politicians are doing that across a range of issues. Consider banks. In the same way that voters were assured Islam was a negligible factor in the banlieues right up until it proved to be significant, they assumed the bail-out of the Franco-Belgian bank Dexia that they paid for three years ago had done the trick. Dexia passed the recent EU stress tests, too. But this week, the bank’s Greek positions and “legacy” debt caught up with it, placing French taxpayers on the hook for a bail-out that will cost them billions more.


Matters get more complicated when put in a European context. Ms Aubry wants to leverage the European financial stability facility, the European bail-out mechanism, into a €2,000bn ($2,698bn) rescue fund. This is a solution to the euro problem more consistent with the public that voted narrowly to approve the Maastricht treaty in 1992 than with the public that overwhelmingly rejected closer integration in 2005.


There has been a sea change in sentiment, which politicians have probably noticed, but have been unable to address. Socially, economically and politically, the French are being offered policies appropriate to the world before Lehman collapsed. Their political leaders have not learnt to think in new terms, only to weave an ever more tangled web of rationalisations. This cannot go on for ever.


The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011