EndrTimes: Hollande

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Monday, August 24, 2015

Americans awarded France’s highest honor after stopping European train attack

Europe

Men who disarmed gunman get France's highest honor

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French President François Hollande awarded France's highest honor, the Legion d'honneur, to three Americans and a British man who helped disarm a machine gun-toting suspected Islamist militant on a train bound for Paris. (Reuters)

By Michael Birnbaum August 24 at 6:15 AM

BRUSSELS — One of the Americans who prevented a bloodbath on a high-speed European train serves in the Air Force. Another is in the Oregon National Guard. On Monday, the enlisted men became knights — of the Legion of Honor — along with two others who took part in the rescue, as French President François Hollande awarded them France’s highest decoration.

In a solemn ceremony held in France’s glittering Elysée Palace, the seat of the presidency, Hollande said the four men had averted a catastrophe when they tackled and trussed a heavily armed man who had opened fire on the train.

The men have resisted being labeled as heroes, saying that they gave little thought to their actions until after the heat of the moment. At the ceremony, the trio of Americans, friends since childhood, dressed modestly in polo shirts and khakis. But Hollande said their coolness under fire was a lesson to all of France — and the world.

“You have shown that in the face of terror, you can resist,” Hollande said before he pinned the ribbons on the men’s chests. “So you have given us a lesson of courage, of determination and therefore of hope.”

“There were over 500 passengers on that train. Ayoub el-Khazzani possessed over 300 bullets. And we realize now how close we were to a tragedy and a massacre,” Hollande said, formally identifying the suspect in the shooting for the first time, a Moroccan man just short of his 26th birthday.

Gunman taken down by Americans aboard a French train

A gunman opened fire on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday, wounding two people before being subdued by three American passengers.

The men who were awarded the medals were Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone, of California; Specialist Alek Skarlatos, just returned from a deployment to Afghanistan; their childhood friend Anthony Sadler, and British businessman Chris Norman. Hollande said he also intended to award the honor to Mark Moogalian, a dual French-American citizen who also took part in the rescue and was severely wounded, and a French citizen who was the first to try to disarm the shooter and has asked to remain anonymous.

Hollande pinned the red ribbons and five-pointed medal on each man’s chest, then kissed each on one cheek, then the other. The two servicemen plan to proceed with their families to Germany for further medical treatment, while Sadler plans to return home to California to start his senior year of college, they said Sunday.

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Monday, May 11, 2015

France's Hollande arrives in Cuba on historic visit

By Alexandre Grosbois, Sabine Wibaux1 hour ago

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Havana (AFP) - Francois Hollande arrived in Havana late Sunday, the first French president to visit Cuba in more than a century, cementing Paris's lead in the EU rapprochement with the communist island.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

France's Sunday Pirouettes

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

By ROBERT ZARETSKYJAN. 25, 2015

Before the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks on Jan. 7, France was bracing for a dispute that, though neither violent nor volatile, nevertheless goes to the heart of the internal tensions over the role of religion in this devoutly secular country. After a tense, week-long negotiation between a special committee and the minister of the economy, Emmanuel Macron, the National Assembly will begin debate Monday on whether department stores and shops will be allowed to open more often on what has been a traditional day of rest.

During his presidential campaign in 2012, François Hollande lambasted the Right for its efforts to transform Sunday into a day like any other, devoted to business and material gain. The great battle of 2012, he declared, was over “the principle of Sunday as a day of rest, one that workers can devote to sport, to family, culture and to liberty.” If elected, Mr. Hollande promised, he “would keep vigil” over this sacrosanct day.

After three years of political disarray, economic malaise and mounting unemployment, however, Mr. Hollande has grown increasingly desperate. In mid-December, his treasury minister, Mr. Macron, offered a battery of legislation that seeks to liberalize some of the nation’s laws governing commerce and the liberal professions. One proposal in particular drew the ire of Mr. Hollande’s Socialist party rank-and-file, not to mention the Communists: The proposed law would allow stores or businesses to open 12 Sundays a year rather than just the five now permitted.

The Socialist dissident Martine Aubry published an opinion article in Le Monde that appeared the same day the government rolled out its legislation. Architect of the 35-hour week, a signature achievement of the Socialists introduced in 2000, Ms. Aubry dwelt on the meaning of the Sunday law. It is, she claimed, “a moment of truth speaking to the one question that truly matters: What kind of society do we want to live in?” Is this, she wondered, all the Left has left to offer: “A Sunday stroll in a shopping mall and the accumulation of consumer goods?”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fiery leftist, was even more categorical. A relentless critic of the “savage capitalism” he associates with America, Mr. Mélenchon declared that the Revolution had freed the French to be human, not to become captives of a “blind consumerism.”

In the heat of battle, Mr. Mélenchon has found an unlikely ally in a traditional antagonist, the Catholic Church, which has also denounced the law. As one cleric explained, the church has joined the Communists for social as well as religious reasons. Rallying to the support of the Socialist Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who also opposes the new law, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois reminded his flock that France’s economic difficulties, though great, do not justify ignoring the benefits of “a common day of rest.”

The French have long had conflicted feelings about Sundays. In the early 1950s, the singer Juliette Greco — one of the muses for French existentialists — made her reputation with “I Hate Sundays.” While she derides Sunday as dead time, made for funerals and the hollow rites of the bourgeoisie, Greco also praises Sunday as the day for making love, not things.

Decidedly, as the French psychiatrist Serge Hefez notes: “Sundays are engraved in the French psyche.” But the day is also engraved in France’s history. During the last decades of the 19th century, French workers, laboring 10 hours a day, seven days a week, repeatedly went on strike to win a day of rest. In 1906, the government grudgingly conceded Sundays as a day of repose, hoping that if workers spent more time at home they would spend less time drinking in cafes. By the end of World War I, Sunday had taken root in the French cultural landscape — so much so that, in a 2008 poll, 84 percent declared that it was “important, indeed primordial, for family, cultural and religious life that Sunday remain the day of common rest.”

Pirouetting 180 degrees, Mr. Hollande, who had insisted Sunday was a day of republican repose, now dismisses it as a relic of an earlier age. Hammering at the same speaking points as Mr. Macron and Prime Minister Manuel Valls, President Hollande touts the liberty not to rest if one prefers to work (with greater pay, he always adds).

There is no clear consensus on the proposed law’s economic payoff. But one suspects that such concerns are secondary for both sides. Instead, traditionalists and modernizers are wrestling over a symbol — no small matter in a nation that, from the taking of the Bastille to the making of “Je suis Charlie,” understands the importance of political emblems.

As if to emphasize this very point, the marathon meeting between the Assembly representatives and Macron reached the finish line ... last Sunday. This was an unprecedented event in the annals of the Fifth Republic — even the National Assembly takes Sunday off.

Like politicians everywhere, France’s lawmakers are attached to symbols, but they are even more attached to being re-elected. The compromise bill that will be presented on Monday punts the issue to city governments, leaving it to mayors to decide on the number of Sundays stores can open. And so, as the philosopher André Comte-Sponville presciently observed: One spends one’s time “working, hurrying, waiting for the weekend. ... Finally, Sunday. For what? For nothing.”

Robert Zaretsky is a professor of World cultures and literatures at the University of Houston, and the author of the forthcoming “Boswell’s Enlightenment.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 26, 2015, in The International New York Times.

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Monday, August 25, 2014

France In "Political Turmoil" After Hollande Unexpectedly Dissolves Government

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/25/2014 08:02 -0400

Earlier this morning, those expecting an out of control European deflationary tumble got one step closer to their goal when French President Francois Hollande asked his prime minister, who only assumed the post a few short months ago in March, to form a new government, following what Reuters reported was him "looking to impose his will on the cabinet after rebel leftist ministers had called for an economic policy U-turn" spearheaded by economy minister Arnaud Montebourg demanding an end to French "austerity." TheGuardian is somewhat more direct and to the point: "France has entered uncharted political waters after the prime minister, Manuel Valls, presented his government's resignation amid a political crisis triggered by his maverick economy minister who called for an end to austerity policies imposed by Germany."

In short: just days after we reported that trouble was brewing in socialist paradise, when the rating of Venezuela's Maduro tumbled to all-time lows, socialism is once again in turmoil, this time in France.

The details:

The prime minister, a social democrat who has been compared to Tony Blair, acted with characteristic swiftness in a bid to reassert his authority. His aides had let it be known on Sunday that the economy minister, Arnaud Montebourg, had crossed a "yellow line" for his dual crime of criticising both the president of France and a valued ally.

Montebourg, 51, fired his first broadside in an interview with Le Monde on Saturday and followed up with a speech to a Socialist party rally the following day. In a veiled reference to President François Hollande, he said that conformism was an enemy and "my enemy is governing". "France is a free country which shouldn't be aligning itself with the obsessions of the German right," he said, urging a "just and sane resistance".

He was joined in his criticism by the education minister Benoit Hamon, who on Monday denied that he had been disloyal. A third minister, Aurélie Filipetti, also appeared in danger of losing her job after wishing a "good day" on Twitter to her two dissident colleagues.

Perhaps in an ironic case of poetic justice, she will also be terminated via Twitter? Meanwhile, nothing changes for France where other people's money appears to have run out:

Hollande, who is politically weakened with his approval rating at an all-time low of 17%,asked Valls to form a new government "consistent with the direction set for the country", which is expected to be announced on Tuesday. Valls has pledged to stick to a course in which deficits would be cut while the tax burden on businesses would be eased, bringing him into conflict with the left wing of the party represented by Montebourg. The changes have not yet been carried out, unemployment is at nearly 11% and growth in 2014 is forecast to be only 0.5%.

Now, with the fragmentation of the left bursting into the open, Montebourg is scheduled to deliver a speech later on Monday.

Centre-right politicians had called for the economy minister to step down, while some Socialists recognised that it was illogical for an economy minister to attack his own government's economic policies. The National Front is demanding the dissolution of parliament.

The challenge for Valls will be to put together a government that can win the approval of the national assembly, despite the revolt by the Socialist party's left flank and desertion by the ecologists.

There is some hope that not every minister will become a ward of the state:

Analysts said that Valls was likely to keep Hollande loyalists in the cabinet, including the finance minister, Michel Sapin, the agriculture minister, Stephane Le Foll, and the defence minister, Yves Le Drian. But the justice minister, Christiane Taubira, could be among those to pay the price of falling out with Valls.

It remains to be seen whether Valls, who became prime minister in March, will be allowed more leeway in forming his new government, compared with the outgoing cabinet that reflected the internal contradictions of Hollande himself. Le Parisien reported on Monday that he had said to Hollande "it's him or me". referring to Montebourg.

Finally, it is not just the left that is turmoiling. So are the moderates on the center/right:

The crisis is unfolding as politicians already have an eye on the next presidential elections in 2017. Montebourg may now see himself as the flag-bearer of the left, while Valls until now has remained popular in the country as a whole although his popularity ratings have also shrunk.

The centre-right UMP is also in crisis, however. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has not yet announced whether he intends to run although he is widely expected to do so. But former prime minister Alain Juppé, mayor of Bordeaux, and former agriculture minister Bruno Lemaire , have said in the last few days that they would take part in a primary.

The biggest winner from the latest socialist fiasco: the extreme, far right National Front, whose leaderMarine Le Pen was one of the biggest winners in this year's European Parliament elections. And so Europe once again goes full circle as the rise of nationalism inevitably follows the now cyclical economic collapse which follows Europe every few decades.

Meanwhile, European stocks soar thanks to both this, and the weaker than expected German IFO Business Climate print, as an out of control European deflationary collapse simply means more "easing" by the ECB (if only for the 1%), which after already being backlogged by the previously announced OMT, TLTRO, and ABS, now has QE on its "to do" list as well.

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Monday, January 07, 2013

Competitive Advantage Could Force French Labor Changes

by ELEANOR BEARDSLEY

January 07, 2013 4:00 AM

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French President Francois Hollande has vowed to improve his country's competitiveness. But to better compete, France has to overhaul its labor market, and some hard-earned workers' rights and privileges could be lost.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Obama, Hollande help tilt G8’s balance to stimulus

U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande take time for a photo opportunity at Saturday's G8 summit at Camp David, Md.

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

KEVIN CARMICHAEL

Globe and Mail Update

Published Saturday, May. 19, 2012 9:02PM EDT

Last updated Sunday, May. 20, 2012 5:04AM EDT

Economic stimulus is making a comeback.

The most notable thing about the Group of Eight Summit in Maryland on Friday and Saturday was the recognition that austerity isn’t a universal cure for what ails the global economy, especially Europe.

President Barack Obama and France’s newly elected Socialist President, François Hollande, were the rhetorical winners on the weekend.

They successfully watered down the German-led position that the best way to deal with a debt crisis is to quickly pay down debt by shifting the consensus to an acceptance that austerity is a means, not an end. Fiscal consolidation remains a priority, but not at the expense of economic growth, a new emphasis that could reshape governments’ approach to maintaining the recovery from the financial crisis.

“The global economic recovery shows signs of promise, but significant headwinds persist,” the G8 said in a statement. “We commit to take all necessary steps to strengthen and reinvigorate our economies and combat financial stresses, recognizing that the right measures are not the same for each of us.”

The shift reflects the acute state of the European debt crisis, which Mr. Obama characterized on Saturday as a “serious” situation that could upend the global economic recovery. The G8 also said it stood ready to release strategic oil reserves if crude prices surge this summer, but it was the prospect of Europe sinking into a deeper downturn that most worried leaders.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters that he detected a “growing sense of urgency that action needed to be taken” on the euro-zone crisis, Reuters reported. “Contingency plans need to be put in place and the strengthening of banks, governance, firewalls – all of those things need to take place very fast,” Mr. Cameron said.

Europe’s economy is stagnant, struggling to avoid recession amidst double-digit unemployment rates in most countries. Britain, which sits outside the euro zone, nevertheless counts the 17 members of the euro region as some of its main trading partners. Mr. Cameron, too, is fighting off recession. His cause hasn’t been helped by his decision to implement draconian spending cuts.

Germany is a notable exception, and its economic strength has given Chancellor Angela Merkel considerable clout in discussions on dealing with the troubles in the euro zone.

The German formula is simple: sacrifice. Using her country’s own history of fiscal discipline as reinforcement, Ms. Merkel insisted the international rescues of Greece, Ireland and Portugal came with tough budgetary conditions.

Other euro-zone countries, including Italy and Spain, have implemented austerity programs to keep nervous bond traders from driving up their borrowing costs. But these programs were implemented in part because Germany made clear it has little appetite for bankrolling more bailouts.

The apotheosis of austerity came at the Group of 20 Summit in Toronto in 2010, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper orchestrated a group pledge to halve budget deficits by next year.

Mr. Harper insisted Saturday that the Toronto austerity pledge remains valid.

“Fiscal discipline and economic growth go hand in hand,” Mr. Harper said when asked about the G8’s shift to a better balance between cost-cutting and more direct growth measures. “All of our discussions recognized that. Fiscal discipline is not sufficient for economic growth, but it is absolutely necessary. We will not emerge from what is now a debt-driven crisis unless that issue is addressed.”

The cost-cutting measures implemented in Europe since the Toronto summit caused considerable economic pain, and voters are rejecting the medicine.

Mr. Hollande was attending his first international summit after French voters earlier this month rejected Nicolas Sarkozy, who championed austerity. Greece will hold its second election in a month in June after pro- and anti-austerity parties split the vote earlier this month, leaving none with enough support to form a government. The June vote is being characterized as a referendum on Greece’s future as a euro country.

Facing an election of his own in November, the last thing Mr. Obama wants to contend with is a rupture of the euro zone, which at a minimum would shake global financial markets. Under Mr. Obama’s guidance at the Camp David presidential retreat, the G8 took the rare step of referencing an outside country by name, saying the group – the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia – desired Greece to stay in the euro zone.

With a debt well in excess of the size of its economy, and German voters resentful of their taxes being used to bailout nations they see as profligate, it’s unlikely the conditions of Greece’s rescue package will change significantly, if at all.

There is nothing binding about a G8 commitment, but countries do use them as political cover back home. European leaders are scheduled to meet in a few days, and it now seems likely that growth initiatives, such as a rumoured infrastructure program, stand a better chance of becoming reality.

“Today we discussed ways [Europe] can promote growth and job creation right now, while still carrying out reforms necessary to stabilize and strengthen their economies for the future,” Mr. Obama said at the end of the summit Saturday.

Ms. Merkel made the point that governments can enhance growth by other means than pumping taxpayers’ money into the economy. She said measures under consideration in Europe include investments in research and development, Internet networks, and infrastructure. “This doesn’t mean stimulus in the traditional sense,” Ms. Merkel said, according to the Associated Press.

There were other hints in the G8 statement about how European leaders will approach debt going forward.

The document said the G8 welcomed Europe’s commitment to fiscal consolidation, assessed on a “structural basis.” A “structural” assessment of budgets subtracts interest payments. The decision to write that into the final statement could reflect recognition that much of the pressure on budgets in Europe is the result of record-high borrowing costs.

G8 leaders also emphasized their pursuit of “bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral” free-trade agreements, suggesting they will seek to lower trade barriers in any way possible, rather than getting hung up on a big global agreement under the World Trade Organization.

The final statement also said efforts to overhaul financial regulations should result in “stronger systems over time while not choking off near-term credit growth,” language bank lobbyists will see as a willingness of by world major financial centres to slow the pace of regulatory reforms.

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