Foreign Policy Aggression Blooms in Paris Spring

Paris Nord station was its usual mid morning bustle and chaos, but the sight of what looked for all the world like riot police directing the taxi queue was quite a shock until the realisation dawned that these were in fact a new breed of touts, offering to whisk Eurostar travellers through the traffic on the back of a motor bike.

These aggressive images of helmeted heavies seemed an entirely appropriate symbol of France’s new assertiveness in foreign and domestic policy matters.  A world news media full with George Bush Senior’s so-called “garlic chewing surrender monkeys” delivering lethal force from the skies above Libya and on the streets of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, while banning the public wearing of the burqa seemed to herald a new order.

It may reflect a new found confidence driven by an encouraging economic performance as France emerges steadily and relatively unscathed from the world global financial crisis predicting.  First quarter 2011 growth was 0.7%, which while not exactly matching China or India, exceeds what is being achieved almost anywhere else in Europe except of course the powerhouse of Germany.  The budget deficit is now predicted to fall to 5.7% of GDP this year and 4.6% in 2012.

Unemployment is over 9%, much in line with the US, and is inevitably concentrated amongst the younger and older sections of the working population, with much concern about long-term victims.  With Presidential elections next year, there is much political rhetoric about the importance of getting people back to work.  Cutting fixed levies on employment and bureaucratic red tape may be a positive step, but it seems unlikely that the stubborn adherence to an unrealistic and inflexible 35 hour working week will change any time soon. 

Inflation is also under control at an official rate of 2%, enough to turn any British visitor green with envy.  But whatever government statistics might say, it is almost impossible to avoid the sensation that either Paris has become the tourist rip off capital of the world, or it has it has its very own inflation micro-climate.  Last year’s €11 for a small bottle of Kronenbourg 1664 in a hotel bar has somehow escalated to €18 for a single gin and tonic, making the shock of paying €8 for a pint of Guinness in Dublin this time last year feel like a distant low cost option.

Hardly surprising then that Paris restaurants were far from full, with many fewer business men indulging in the traditional long lunch, or that the crowds of tourists were shunning pavement cafes and their surly waiters in favour of KFC and snacking on the move on cheaper baguettes miserably light on content and flavour.

There are also clear indications of the financial stress being felt in the French wine industry as it battles ineffectively against economic pressures and the New World’s more reliable and better marketed vintages.  The look of faint displeasure on a lunch companion’s face at the first taste of a very ordinary Crozes Hermitage at the otherwise excellent Aux Bons Crus confirmed that it was as thin in body as it was fat in price.

Paris remains a stunningly beautiful city, rightly sought out as the most romantic of environments.  But passion and a budget are uncomfortable bed fellows, sadly all too common now in the City of Love.