Tempers boil over as France enters a summer of discontent

Europe, including the United Kingdom, is in dire straits. So is the US – though it likes to pretend otherwise. Russia, as the principal villain in the ongoing economic crisis, is being held together by oil and gas. Even China is hurting. And all over the world, from Greenland to Australia, temperatures are rising. 

In France, the current heatwave, or canicule, is the topic on everybody’s parched lips. From Caen in the north to Cannes in the south and from La Rochelle to Strasbourg, the thermometers are registering in the mid-to-high 30s celsius, with no sign of a let-up. The beaches are, as Jeremy Corbyn might say, rampacked. 

Bars and restaurants can’t cope. Not only are customers queuing out the doors, but there aren’t the staff to deal with them. As much as a quarter of the seasonal workforce that in pre-Covid times would have kept the show on the road from June through to September has stayed away, doing what for a living is not entirely clear. 

Already, the emergency services are struggling to keep pace with events. Wildfires in Gascony and the Basque Country have led to mass-evacuations of holidaymakers, and the threat-level in Provence and Alpes Maritimes is building with each passing day. According to the experts, mosquitos are having a field day, especially the feared Tiger variety, which doesn’t make a sound and is as likely to feed during the day as overnight. 

As if this wasn’t enough, everything else is going wrong at the same time.

Covid has returned to take a curtain-call. The infection rate is rising, but clinicians and health workers are fighting a losing battle as they attempt to persuade the French to wear masks and maintain at least a show of social distancing. 

As for the economy, it is hard to know where to start. The euro has plummeted to parity with the dollar, losing 15 per cent of its value in the last six months. And it may fall further. This is not, of course, a uniquely French problem. The crisis has spread across the whole of the Eurozone. Sanctions that were supposed to bring Russia to its knees have instead resulted in Europe’s feet being held to the fire.

Brave souls, whistling in the dark, have argued that it is not the single currency that has dropped, but the dollar that has surged, as it always does during times of international crisis. It could, however, equally be observed that while the Fed in Washington has acted to hold back inflation by raising interest rates, the European Central Bank has opted to tough it out, leaving rates in most instances at no more than 0.3 per cent and in the case of overnight deposits at minus 0.04 per cent – meaning that corporations might as well have left their cash in their CFO’s mattress.

But don’t laugh. The Bank of England rate is currently 1.25 per cent – up from 0.1 per cent in March – which is one (though by no means the only) reason why inflation in the UK recently hit a 40-year high of 9.1 per cent, compared with 5.8 per cent in France and 7.6 per cent in Germany. 

The UK can at least take comfort from the fact that, by way of its own North Sea deposits and long-standing contracts with Norway, it is markedly less exposed to Russian oil and gas than its continental neighbours. Germany is trying hard not to panic as it is forced to consider gas rationing in mid and late summer, never mind autumn and winter, with its energy supplies reduced to a trickle. 

France ought to be feeling smug at this point. Famously, it relies on nuclear power for the great bulk of its power-generation. “Ought” is, though, the operative word here. The fact is that 40 per cent of the country’s nominal capacity from nuclear is offline at present due to a calendar of repair and maintenance that for some reason did not show up on the government’s radar until the invasion of Ukraine. And as if this wasn’t bad enough, the next generation of reactors that were due to be coming onstream in the years immediately ahead have been plagued with technical and safety issues, so that it could be well into the 2030s before France feels once more totally secure. 

In the meantime, President Macron has announced that EDF, the company behind France’s nuclear power programme, is to be taken completely into state ownership. As a result, Britain’s next-generation reactors, built by EDF, must now look to the Élysée if it wants them to be completed in anything like the time agreed when the contracts were signed. 

The situation in the French economy generally is equally fraught, as it is in Germany, which has been busy switching off its atomic power stations just as they were about to be needed most. Tourism in Paris this summer is booming. It seems as if half the US population, armour-plated by the mighty dollar, is determined to get on a riverboat down the Seine. Major French manufacturers, like Airbus and LVMH, are at the same time cashing in on the fact that long-term contracts with America denominated in dollars should boost their euro holdings by handsome margins this year and quite possibly for several years to come. 

On the debit side, France imports more than half its food needs and is heavily dependent on raw materials from Russia and the developing world. Purchases on this side of the ledger, whatever the currency, will be a significant drain on resources for as long as the present emergency lasts, further ratcheting inflation and in all likelihood forcing vulnerable businesses to the wall. 

Macron, inevitably, is the one taking the flak for everything that goes wrong. Voters aren’t interested in how misfortunes arise, they only know that responsibility for the condition of France is never shared out but always laid at the feet of the President. The fact that, following last month’s elections, he now lacks a majority in the National Assembly only adds to his woes. The one item of good fortune coming his way anytime soon will be the Assembly’s month-long summer recess, starting on 9 August . 

Tuesday’s session in the Palais Bourbon provided a glimpse of what is to come. A government proposal outlining measures to protect the French from the worst effects of yet another bout of Covid-19 was defeated after an ill-tempered debate, by 221 votes to 187. The debate was never about what was written in the Bill, it was always about the Left and Right ganging up against the centre. 

Macron and his prime minister Elisabeth Born will have time over the summer to consider their position and to work out which factions are most likely to side with them on which issues. Government has to go on in the midst of adversity and the assumption is that a carefully targeted legislative programme will emerge in September around which an ever-shifting majority can hopefully coalesce. The alternative – chaos – profits no one except those who enjoy friction for its own sake and would end in an early dissolution of parliament followed by elections from which the President would probably gain the most. 

The problem is, how do you keep cool when the temperature in every corner of the country is heading towards 40 degrees? We may soon find out.