While I agree Hollande has violated his campaign promise on the Fiskalpakt, it is worth noting *how* he plans to reduce the deficit. This year it has been entirely through tax hikes (€7.2 billion) and the government has said next year’s €33 billion will be split 50/50 into tax hikes/spending cuts. http://www.craigwilly.info/?p=1231

Not great, but notable given how other Western governments have sought or compromised to cut taxes on the rich in a time of austerity (Cameron/Obama). And progressives in the Netherlands, Britain and Germany appear to be emulating Hollande.

Marie-Noelle Lienemann is a she not a he

The papers here (France) have as front page news problems between PS and Greens over their pre-election agreement on nuclear (reducing the proportion of nuclear to 50% from 70-something%).

The Greens are insisting that the agreement is kept to while PS seem to be trying to wriggle out of it. It’s mistake for the PS to go back on so many promises so quickly (and unethical), particularly when there are those to the left and right of them quite happy to take their votes.

Melenchon’s rhetoric is understandable enough, given the media focus on the Fiscal Compact, and (within the left) its renaming as the Permanent Austerity Compact.

However, it’s worth noting that, central to Hollande’s negotiating tactics with Merkel over how the Fiscal Compact might be balanced by a Growth Compact, may well be the understanding that most of what is in the Fiscal Compact was signed into European law in November 2011 anyway, in the form of the the regulatory ‘six-pack’.

(The extent to which it is implemented may be a different matter, just as it was with the original Stability and Growth Pact, broken by Germany in the wake of reunification, but without any sanction).

See http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2012/05/09/which-pact-is-it-anyway/
for more details.

May also be worth pointing out that, as far as I’m aware at the moment, Hollande is not looking at “selling the merits of embedding austerity in the Constitution forever”, but is looking at how the Fiscal Compact might be introduced as a ‘loi organique’ ie. at a legal level ‘below’ ‘the constitution. See http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_organique

Accept that things may have changed since I last looked.

@1: “it is worth noting *how* he plans to reduce the deficit. This year it has been entirely through tax hikes (€7.2 billion) ”

“Has been”? Has any of that money been actually collected yet? It remains to be seen how much the tax hikes actually generate, but since Hollande has been in office for about three months, at best this could be described as an intention, and a more sceptic person might call it a publicity stunt.

Hey, France, hows that socialism working out for you?

- 75% tax rate delayed
- 45% tax rate delayed
- Hollande brags to journalists in Britian : “The top rate in Britain is 45 per cent, in France it is only 41 per cent.”
- Hollande fails to re-negotiate EU Financial Pact
- Growth pact €75bn of new money, less than 1% of EU GDP
- Hollande tells Greece to show greater commitment to austerity.

“Hey, France, hows that socialism working out for you?”

Better than the Condems’ blind, hopeless, neoliberal ideology is working out for us, huh?

Hi do hope the naive fools who thought Hollande would act upon any of his socialist pre-election claims don’t make the same mistake with Miliband…

“What do we want?
The same as the Tories.
When do we want it?
Over a fractionally longer period!”

*snork*

The French press are getting on his back, from what I could translate of the papers over there last week. People are particularly peeved about rising fuel prices (diesel 20% cheaper than the UK – they don’t know what expensive fuel is) and the honeymoon’s over.

But AFAIK they’re still going ahead with the tax rises for high earners, and I’m not at all sure they’ll be decamping to London, as Cameron hopes. France is still very uncrowded compared to the UK, and the quality of life is better.

Not sure about “Monsieur Normale”. Fathered four children by the lovely Sego, then dropped her for a younger model and took over the SP leadership from her to add insult to injury. Is that normal even for a Frenchman?

President Hollande’s new partner is a good deal more complicated and formidable a character than just a younger model than her predecessor Sego Royal. Try:

Valérie Trierweiler: France’s femme formidable

The president’s ‘first lady’ is unrepentant over her sideswipes at his ex-partner. Is she an admirably independent professional or a political liability?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/jun/17/observer-profile-valerie-trierweiler-france

Valérie Trierweiler was a Paris Match political reporter for the past 22 years. Hollande, 57, and Trierweiler 47, met 15 years ago at a political rally and have reportedly been a couple for five years. OTOH Sego, like Hollande, is a graduate of the prestigious L’ecole nationale d’administration, which is the usual entry route for France’s political elite. Sarkozy was not a graduate of L’ecole nationale d’administration.

Bob – see this :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/francois-hollande/9506869/Francois-Hollandes-dithering-stoked-war-between-his-women.html

Bob – if you take a look at todays Torygraph you’ll see a number of Trier-related stories, about her “thirst for revenge” against Sego and how Hollande played them both like a violin. Source is apparently a new book by a couple of French lady journos.

I also see that the policy of dismantling Roma camps continues.

Laban

Thanks for that link. There’s more and more on the same themes in the press over the last few days and it’s looking as though this story is going to run and run.

Try this report from back in May for more background on the triangle and the prior marital history of Valerie. By some reports, she is credited with successfully brushing up Hollande’s public image for the presidential elections.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/francois-hollande/9261881/Valerie-Trierweiler-Frances-feisty-new-first-lady-seizes-the-limelight-from-her-rivals.html

There seems to be some conflict in press reports over just how long the relationship between Valerie and Hollande has been going on. By some accounts, Hollande was put out when Sego won the Socialist Party’s primary election to decide on the party’s candidate for the previous Presidential election which Sarkozy won.

A genuine cause for concern is that all this froth may conceal important news about rescuing the Eurozone and what the French government is doing to substitute growth for austerity.

I note Hollande is as much a war hawk as Sarko.

There’s no reason for doubting the war spirits of the Socialists in France. A socialist government in France was in a conspiratorial alliance with Eden’s Conservative government in Britain and the Israeli’s to conduct the Suez invasion in 1956.

As for Sego:

“Segolene has her enemies. Le Canard Enchaine (the French equivalent of Private Eye) once charged her with claiming child benefit despite her considerable wealth, but the accusation seemed petty and mean to most readers. More damaging was the fact that her brother, Gerard Royal, a lieutenant in the French secret services, was implicated in the Rainbow Warrior affair in 1985, when a Greenpeace boat was deliberately sunk by the French navy. Segolene, no doubt correctly, claims no knowledge of the incident other than what she has read in the papers.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/23/france.featuresreview

Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, was sunk in 1985 while in the port of Aukland in New Zealand. Mitterrand was France’s socialist president at the time.

it’s amazing that, given the collapse of Social Democracy in Europe, which, may I just point out, occurred before the Eurozone crisis (and wider financial crisis), that any thoughtful person could somehow be “disappointed” that Hollande has failed to live up to his election promises. Does nobody remember Anthony Blair? Does nobody remember Barack H. Obama. Obama successfully won a landslide election by appropriating, even *simulating*, the causes and issues integral to the “left”. He was anti-War, he was anti-NAFTA, he was all for closing down Guantanamo, etc, etc.

In France, we see Hollande, a man so utterly uncharismatic, ride the wave of popular opinion against EU-imposed fiscal austerity, but, at the first instance of actually policy, he retreats from his position and thus rescinds one of the main reasons for his election. This is exactly what I expected. Indeed, he has even continued and escalated Sarkozy’s horrific evacuation of Roma people, in order to, to paraphrase one of the government ministers, cleanse France from this obscene and unsanitary presence.

It’s not that neoliberalism, racist authoritarianism, imperialism, etc, are somehow ineluctable to those who are elected to office; it’s not that Monsieur Hollande has somehow been ideologically corrupted by extr since becoming President; the truth is that he *believed* in these things *before* he took office, but cynically appropriated the positions of the left in order to secure his election. The Socialist Party in France, for the most part, relates as much to socialism as the Communist Party of China does to communism. The same can and undoubtedly will be said for the Labour Party under Edward Samuel Miliband.

Highly recommended in this Saturday’s The Economist:

President Obama – Four more years?
http://www.economist.com/node/21561890