FRANCE has been looking forward to staging a big spectacle this month. Euro 2016, an international football tournament second in importance only to the World Cup, kicks off in the Stade de France near Paris on June 10th, the first of 51 matches around the country ending with the final on July 10th. But a spectacle of a different sort is attracting attention to France early, and for the wrong reasons: industrial unrest, which threatens to spread chaos and spoil the party.
Last week a blockade of oil refineries led to panic among motorists as petrol stations ran dry. This week the havoc spread to the railways. Pilots at Air France have voted to disrupt flights. A national day of strikes is threatened on June 14th, when the Senate, the upper house, is due to consider the changes to France’s labour laws which are at the centre of the dispute.
At issue are modest reforms designed to tackle the country’s high unemployment, which remains stubbornly at 10%. The law would ease rigid collective-bargaining rules and make firing workers slightly less complex. But this is not the direction of change that France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, promised when he was elected four years ago, pledging to fight austerity and soak the rich (seearticle). Fearful of a rebellion by left-wingers in his own party, his prime minister, Manuel Valls, decided to ram the measures through the National Assembly using executive powers that allow a law to be approved by a motion of confidence, rather than voted on directly. The country’s biggest union, the hard-left Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), has opted to confront the government in the time-honoured French way—and at a moment of maximum pressure, with Euro 2016 looming.
This time, no surrender
The last thing the government wanted was further trouble for a tournament already beset by heightened concerns over terrorist attacks (this week the State Department warned would-be American travellers that Euro 2016 was a potential target). Mr Hollande, his approval rating at a dismal 13%, is poorly placed for a showdown. And the labour reforms, already diluted to an extent that has cost the support of the main employers’ groups, might seem an odd cause for the Socialist leader to fight for. At this point, with mass protests growing, past French administrations would have climbed down. Ten years ago it was a centre-right president, Jacques Chirac, who abandoned a controversial labour reform after weeks of student demonstrations. That followed similar retreats in 1986, 1994 and 1995.
Caving in once again in 2016 would be a mistake. The government should resist even the sort of messy compromise that seems to be tempting it as a means of avoiding disruption at Euro 2016—making concessions to the CGT on restructuring efforts for the national railways, say, in exchange for its acquiescence on the labour laws. Such a compromise would be against the spirit of the reforms, which aim to dilute the role of national law and branch agreements.
Mr Valls says that he is determined to hold his ground. If he and Mr Hollande want to show that they are serious about the change France needs, this is their moment. For once, they must be frank with the French about why these labour-market reforms are a step towards job creation and growth, and in everyone’s interest. Disruption of the coming football tournament would be a shame. But for the sake of France’s future, it is the political game that the government has to win.