Prime Minister François Bylow placed the cat in the pigeon, promising to cut two of the French national holidays to save the country’s finances.
As expected, his proposal to x Easter Monday and August 8 holidays on Tuesday sparked a protest from the left and a populist right.
In a country with a strong tradition of workers’ protest, the sudden removal of two-day holidays was never an easy sell.
Essentially, men and women are made to work two extra days a year without increasing their pay. Increased productivity helps to separate the country from its ever-deep, deep debt hole.
The French are certainly very attached to their Jules Ferrier.
May is waiting every year at Glee, not only because it announces spring, but also because of the long weekends that occur regularly.
If May 1 (Workers’ Day) and May 8 mark the end of World War II and fall on Tuesday or Thursday, the weekend will also be automatically considered a holiday, making it a four-day treat.
In addition to that, there is Ascension (always Thursday) and Easter Monday and Whitt Monday (or Pentecost).
If a church calendar is mandatory, early Easter combines on May 1 or August 8, meaning a true five or six-day Viaduce, not just a four-day weekend spanning Monday or Friday.
November is another east feast, offering relief from the fall blues, with the first All Saints of the month and the 11th day truce. In addition to that, there is the famous “RTT” day, which is in exchange for many people working more than 35 hours a week.
But before you fall into humorous complacentness about “the incredibly lazy Frenchman and God-given right to endless downtime,” you need to keep in mind a few other considerations.
Firstly, far from the popular image, the French actually have fewer national holidays than the European average.
France has 11 like Germany, the Netherlands and the United States.
Slovakia has 15 people, while the UK, Wales and the Netherlands have the lowest eight, with eight.
There are 10 in Ireland and Denmark.
Secondly, according to the UK’s National Bureau of Statistics, France’s productivity (per worker productivity) is 18% higher than UK productivity, so the glow about vacations from the entire channel is misguided.
Thirdly, this is not the first time that France has proposed a national holiday to AX in recent years. It happened before – and (somehow) worked.
In 2003, the conservative government under President Jack Chillac wanted to do something radical after killing 15,000 people after the fatal heat wave of that summer.
So Prime Minister Jean Pierre Lafalin decided to turn Whitt on Monday to solidarity. People work instead of taking a break, and the money their employers earn is paid to the government for funds to support the elderly and disabled.
There was protest, and years later, the change was watered down and the day of solidarity became voluntary. It’s all very confused and no one really understands how it works, but on Monday it generates 3 billion euros (£2.6 billion, $3.5 billion) in receipts each year.
Another precedent goes back to the 1950s and Charles de Gaulle.
Newly appointed president in 1959, he x the May 8 victory on European holidays, and said the country could not afford it. It was revived in 1981 by socialist François Mitterland.
Bayrou is boldly trying to scrap two holidays to cut down on debt
On Tuesday, Minister Benjamin Haddad was very easy to retort when the Greens accused Baillo of trying to wipe out the eradication of Nazism from collective memory.
This does not mean that Bayrou is likely to make his proposal a reality.
The truth is that the Prime Minister is in a position of almost complete impotence. It runs a government with no majority in parliament. This could fall any time if the opposition group decides.
But, strangely, this extremely helplessness gave Bailou the freedom to say what he thinks.
If his budget proposal is unlikely to be voted through Parliament, and if the chances are virtually zero, he may give France a truth that he has not usd.
The economic situation is disastrous, he said.
Every second it passes, France is in debt of 5,000 euros.
Today it’s 3.3tn. In these circumstances, Bayrou believes we need to rethink our way of life. And work.
