Vox Polis

I’ve been following the French election campaign for some time; over the last year we’ve seen the excitement of Chirac’s protege de Villepin destroying his chances of standing for President over the CPE fiasco, Chirac’s false hopes of standing again (he came 17th in a recent poll as who should be the next President), and Royal’s controversial nomination campaign. But this is the first time i’ve got round to writing about it. Why? Well this is when it begins to get exciting, even though campaigning doesn’t officially start until April.

My money has always been on the “poisoned drawf” Sarkozy winning the election. Not because he would make a better President but because he is more ambitious and more determined. Don’t forget he’s wanted to be president since he was a teenager. But also because I think Royal’s “post-modern listening experiment” will eventually fall on deaf ears.

Royal’s campaign strategy sounds great in theory but they will not work in a political environment consumed by distrust, presentations and sound bites. Royal wants a deliberative campaign where she listens to everyone’s concerns, makes notes and then comes up with some great policies. Great in theory- some of the best political campaigners have pretended to be been listeners. Remember Bobby Kennedy or Bill Clinton! But you can’t using these processes to formulate policy, it will ultimately upset those who’s ideas were not used and those who feel the new policies don’t go far enough.

Such a process is making her appear weak in comparison to Sarkozy, who has effectively seized the initiative and is currently setting the agenda of the political campaign. Royal’s listening phase of the campaign has been overshadowed by gaffes, the revelations by aides and her lack of concrete policies. She’s got alot of convincing to do in the second talking phase of her campaign if she hopes to win.

Chirac has been trying to develop a French CNN to combat the Anglo-Saxon dominance of news coverage for the last 25 years. That dream is now a reality, albeit with a tiny budget. And to combat this Anglo-Saxon dominance its also broadcast in English.

According to the snazzy promotional video France24 “Questions, Confronts, Testifies and Analyzes”. All sounds exciting to me.

Exclusive images of FRANCE 24
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It seems that the new EU wine label logo is not as uniting as people hoped.

The French have complained because the logo doesn’t look the same when you translate it into different languages, and supposedly it’s in English on some EU sites (not French). Here are the French changes:

…and the original one:

Some also believe it looks like Google and the ‘r’ at the end is like the copyright symbol - symbolising capitalism. Clearly these aren’t things the EU should be celebrating. That’s also no problem if we keep the French version.

According to the Times, the Germans are also unhappy - and plan to produce their own logo.

I can’t wait for the celebrations next year.

It seems that the 35 hour week is too much for most of the French. According to this survey by TNS-Sofres for the magazine Vivre Plus most people want to work only 6 hours a day.

No wonder the French economy is doing so badly. The unemployment rate may be coming down but its still 8.9%.

There’s been lots of reports about the petition to stop the absolutely ridiculous monthly trips to the Strasbourg parliament. But as we all know any decision on the future of Strasbourg has to be decided at the EU Council by an absolute majority, meaning of course that France can veto the move.

According to EU Fortress it seems that no French MEPs have signed the petition (not surprising really) but neither have Luxembourg, Slovakian, Maltese or Greek MEPs. A crying shame.

But i’m yet to be convinced that a petition is going to do anything. The only way is to take direct action and to stop visiting the Strasbourg Parliament. Every MEP, researcher, hack and hangerons who agree that the “travelling circus” is absurd must take action and stop moving to Strasbourg.

It’s one year since the French rejected the EU Constitution in a referendum. And what have our leaders learned?

Meeting last weekend EU foreign ministers decided that their biggest mistake was to call it a Constitution. Not a big surprise there really. But they failed to come up with any real ideas to solve the crisis, except to come back to it next year. As we reported here the Commission is keen to bring back the Constitution, but many leaders seem to want to kick it into the long grass for the time being.

Now i think more than a rebrand is needed to resell the Constitution. Sure calling it a Constitution was clearly a bad move. The 265 page document is not really a Constitution anyway. Usually a Constitution starts with “we the people”…this long document started “the king of Belgium, President of Germany” etc…it is and always will be a intergovernmental treaty.

But to believe that renaming it will fool the voters in France and the Netherlands, is truly unbelievable. No the EU has to start from scratch and rebuild it’s allegiances to recreate confidence in the EU project.

The chaotic climbdown by Chirac’s government last week (which saw the youth law passed and repealed within a week), the youth riots and the elusive elections in Italy are all illustrations how real economic reform is needed in Europe. How can the “European Social Model” be working when unemployment is running as high as 10%?

In modern society the legitimacy of government is often dependent on the maintenance of economic growth and job creation (the cliché- “it’s the economy stupid” comes to mind). Of course government should and does encompass more than that, but that is its primary function whether we like it or not. In this circumstance how can we say that we should maintain a social model that results in 22% of young people unemployed in some parts of France?

French politicians are currently considering whether to legalise music and film downloading and implement a monthly fee to compensate for the lost royalties. The policy has met with opposition from the French government and (surprise, surprise) the recording industry. Some musicians have also come out against the bill. Consumer groups are in favour of the new proposal.

A downloading license has always struck me as being an ideal third way between the current state of affairs where illegal downloading is endemic and the artists get nothing and the course favoured by, for example, the RIAA of restrictive technology barriers backed by draconian laws.

Clearly there would be a number of issues which would have to be cleared up with any such scheme including:

• How much does the license cost?
• How is the money distributed?
• Who has to buy a license?

Those certainly aren’t easy questions but if they can be satisfactorily resolved I believe that a download license could be a suitable method for paying artists in the Internet era.

Via The Register.