French ministers and votes for foreigners - same hymn sheet but different notes

Ah cohesion and clarity.

Two words so often lacking in French government during Nicolas Sarkozy's time in office when ministers would regularly step out of line and speak their minds.

Sometimes it was refreshing such as Fadela Amara calling the proposal to verify the bloodlines of would-be immigrants with DNA tests "dégueulasse" or Rama Yade criticising the visit to France of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

On other occasions it was clearly an attempt to appeal to the very worst sectors of French society such as former interior minister Claude Guéant saying, "France didn't need foreign bricklayers or waiters" or that, "The number of Moslems in France caused problems".

In fact Guéant was a master of the most inappropriate and oftentimes racist of comments?

Thankfully though François Hollande is now president - just in case you hadn't realised...and you could probably be forgiven for not noticing.

So things are bound to be different.

Um.

Maybe not.

Hollande's 60 election promises (which is surely grounds in itself not to believe) included extending the right to vote in local elections to non-EU citizens resident in France.

On Monday a group of 75 Socialist parliamentarians - with more than an eye on the 2014 local elections - decided to call his bluff, urging Hollande and the government to get the process underway saying, "Proposals for were needed quickly because any reform of the law would require constitutional amendment and that would take time."

The reaction of interior minister Manuel Valls, the most liberal-minded and truly Socialist member of government, was one of which both his immediate predecessors in office, Guéant or Brice Hortefeux, would have been proud.

"Is this reform something which preoccupies the French at the moment and would it be a way of improving integration of foreigners into French society?" he asked.

"No," he emphatically told the French daily Le Monde.

"There isn't the same sort of drive for such a move as there would have been 30 years ago," he continued.

"The challenge today is how best French society can integrate foreigners."

Hang about. What exactly did Hollande say during his presidential campaign?

Well in his typically decisive manner, he "promised" a reform but of course left the timing rather open-ended as many, even within his own party, doubted (and still do) whether it was a "priority".



Such clarity: a promise made is one that's certainly not going to be kept.

Enter stage left housing minister Cécile Duflot, free from the constraints of having to toe the Socialist party line because she's in fact a member of  Europe Écologie – Les Verts or the Greens to the rest of us, and one of that party's two ministers in the government.

Don't ask why they've been included because the Socialist party could quite happily form a government without them. Still there was an electoral pact, and we all know how much politicians believe in sticking to promises made.

Cécile Duflot (screenshot from interview with France Inter)

"It's absolutely a necessity and yes, it was an election promise (made by François Hollande) and it'll be honoured next year," she said on France Inter radio.

"It remains an important element in helping integration into French society," she added, contradicting neatly what Valls had said.

"Reform is such an obvious given, that it's surprising it hasn't been done already."


Cécile Duflot par franceinter

So that's as clear as mud.

It remains government policy, but not just yet - and 2013 is still far enough away for plenty of other things to get in the way and banish the promise to the backburner.

(Don't) watch this space.

French diplomacy - "amateur, impulsive and lacking coherence "

Those were the words used to describe France's foreign policy and in particular its diplomacy, under its president Nicolas Sarkozy.

They came in an open letter published on Wednesday in the national daily, Le Monde from the Marly group, a collection of French diplomats, retired and serving, of all political persuasions, who were anonymously but collectively airing their concerns.

French foreign affairs and its diplomacy, certainly seem to have come in for a fair bit of scrutiny recently - and this week's events have perhaps only highlighted how much.

Take for example the first visit of a French government minister to Tunisia since that country's Jasmine revolution.

French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie

In fact there wasn't just one minister but two; Christine Lagarde, the finance minister, and Laurent Wauquiez, the minister for European affairs.

Notice anything odd...apart from the fact that France saw in necessary to send a minister responsible for Europe to a country in North Africa?

Yep, the absence of the foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie (MAM) who had been dispatched to Brazil out of harm's way.

She, MAM, justified her visit to South America as being more "pragmatic".

"The visit was planned over a month ago and Brazil is a country with which we have a very important relationship," she is reported to have said in an informal conversation in the capital Brasilia.

Of course foreign ministers cannot change plans at the last minute to react to changing situations, and her absence in Tunisia had nothing whatsoever to do with the ongoing controversy there has been over her holidays there earlier this year.

So it was left to Lagarde and Wauquiez to build bridges with the finance minister telling journalists that she was confident the relationship between the two countries had not been harmed and Wauquiez mooting the idea of economic aid in the form of a "Marshall plan for Tunisia"

"We've come, not to lecture but to listen to their needs," he said, clearly aware of the fact that there are over 1,200 subsidiaries of French companies in Tunisia and there are interests to be protected.

Strangely silent and hovering in the background was the recently appointed ambassador, Boris Boillon.

He seemed almost, as some commentators back home in France observed, to be paying penance for the insulting remarks he had made to a journalist last week and which resulted in protests calling for his resignation and a subsequent very public apology on national television.

"Sarko boy" was on his best behaviour. Perhaps he had wind of an old can of worms that had been reopened in the form of an appearance he had made on the early evening news magazine Le Grand Journal on Canal + television last November.


Boillon défend Kadhafi (C+)
envoyé par LePostfr. - L'info video en direct.

During the interview Boillon had defended Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, saying he had been a terrorist but wasn't any longer.

"We all make mistakes in life," he said. "And we all have the right to another chance," he said after admitting that Gaddafi had referred to him as "his son".

Boris Boillon (screenshot from Le Grand Journal)

Yes old news - well not so old - but certainly words that seem misplaced with hindsight.

To top it all off was the publication on Wednesday in Le Monde of that open letter from the Marly grop.

"Amateur, impulsive, obsessed with the media and a lack of coherence" were the main criticisms aimed at the current state of affairs.

"Our foreign policy is one of improvisation often undertaken with respect to domestic political considerations," they wrote.

A bold move as far as the weekly news magazine L'Express was concerned and one "which coming from a group of people known for their discretion, indicated how worrying the situation was."