France

One of the persistent misconceptions of the riots that swept through France in the autumn of 2005 is that they were solely the result of the deaths of two youths as they ran from the police. The deaths of the teenagers on October 27 in Clichy-Montfermeil provoked unrest in the north-eastern Parisian suburb but it was what happened three days later that led to three weeks of nationwide riots and the declaration of a state of emergency by the then president of France, Jacques Chirac. According to Gilles Kepel in his 2015 book, Terror in France: genesis of the French Jihad, it was a stray tear gas grenade fired by police that landed close to the entrance of a mosque that lit the touch paper.

Last week, Britain and France were treated to an avalanche of financial statistics jostling with the macabre daily litany of Covid casualty numbers. All are premised on a V-shaped recovery in which the severity and rapidity of the Covid recession is matched by a rapid bounce back. But the French above all should be aware of a historical parallel that suggests caution regarding the V-shaped recovery. But first the size of the problem. In Britain, the Office for Budget Responsibility produced the most pessimistic scenario for the British economy compared to those of KPMG, Morgan Stanley and the OECD. Based on a three-month lockdown it projects a 2020/21 budget deficit of 14 per cent falling back to a 2.

Those of us who are sceptical about the worth of citizens’ assemblies have been noting with interest the upshot of the French citizens’ convention for the climate which delivered its recommendations this week. The thing about these assemblies of randomly selected citizens mulling over thorny issues is that they’re a brilliant way for elected politicians to shift the responsibility for really unpopular policies onto someone else. Except they can go horribly wrong. President Macron used this device to deal with the threat from the gilets jaune, back in those distant days when citizens could actually assemble in France.

When EU finance ministers ended their crisis meeting this morning, they had spent 16 hours trying to establish what collective help, if any, they wish to offer to the countries most affected by the epidemic: Spain and Italy. They agreed on not a thing. Instead, the meeting broke up acrimoniously with Italy, Spain and France demanding that the European Central Bank issue ‘coronabonds’ to help finance economic recovery – while Germany, the Netherlands and others resisted. So we see the EU split along the same lines as did the 2008/09 crisis, and indeed along the same fault lines that have been growing ever wider over the past three decades.

When I left my apartment for my morning run today I saw that someone had scrawled on the courtyard in large chalk letters 'Tenez Bon, Les Voisins' (Hang in there, neighbours). It could have been a message for the whole country. France is flagging after two and a half weeks of complete lockdown and the fact that today is the start of the official Easter holidays will only fray nerves further. To make matters worse, the country will be treated to a taste of summer this weekend with temperatures from Paris to the Pyrenees forecast to touch 23C on Sunday. In an interview today the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, revealed that since France went into lockdown on March 17 there have been 6.

On Saturday night France’s Prime Minister spoke to the French people flanked by the Health Minister, the Director General of Health (DGS) and three epidemiologists, to reassure the public that the government would be more transparent about the spread of coronavirus. Despite President Macron’s increasing media appearances in the ‘war on corona’ a 25 March opinion poll showed 90 per cent of the French public are anxious, 39 points more than on 11 March before the lockdown. Although 64 per cent claimed their morale was holding up, 56 per cent said they had lost faith in the executive’s management of the crisis.

As France prepares to enter its third week of confinement the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, has warned that ‘the fight has only just begun’. Coronavirus has claimed 2,606 French lives to date, but at a press conference on Saturday evening Philippe said: ‘The first 15 days of April will be even more difficult than the last 15 days.’ Earlier in the week Philippe had praised the resolve of the vast majority for respecting the lockdown, and he urged France to hold the course while announcing that the confinement will continue until at least April 15. ‘This struggle will last,’ he said. ‘We will only win by being disciplined and observing lockdown measures.’ But how long can the French hold out?

In France there is a palpable sense of administrative and political panic in how to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. As I write from Perpignan on the French-Spanish border on the morning of 24 March, France has 19,856 coronavirus cases and 860 deaths; Britain 6,650 and 335. After Italy and Spain, France is the third worst affected country in Europe (Germany has more cases because it tests more, but only 123 deaths), but it has imposed and enforced the most severe lockdown. France went into lockdown on 17 March. The administrative state immediately generated an array of bureaucratic forms: a certificate to leave your house to walk the dog or go shopping; a certificate justifying your attendance at work rather than working from home.

‘At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they’re returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth – in other words to silence.’ Albert Camus, The Plague. Faced with Covid-19, France has not yet reached that moment of silence when one gets hardened to the truth. Rhetoric still has the upper hand as President Macron’s address to the nation on Monday night revealed.