Valls makes some progress on reform

Exactly 100 days after he was summoned to rescue François Hollande’s floundering presidency, France’s reformist prime minister Manuel Valls can claim to be making some progress – not least by confronting recalcitrant rebels among the president’s own political ranks.

On Tuesday, the government won an important vote in the National Assembly on measures to begin the implementation of Mr Hollande’s pro-business policy turn, facing down sometimes noisy opposition from a group of Socialist party dissidents who regard Mr Valls’s Blairite tendencies with deep suspicion.

Some 30-plus Socialist deputies abstained in the vote, slightly less than the number of rebels who abstained when Mr Valls set out his stall in a confidence vote in April. The government won by 272 votes to 234 against.

The vote was on the social security budget that included €9bn in cuts in social charges levied on businesses and workers for next year, with the figure rising to €18.6bn in 2017. It is part of an overall pledge to reduce the tax burden on companies by €40bn over the next three years – what Mr Hollande calls the responsibility pact with business.

The government won even more comfortably a vote on state budget measures last week that was the first step towards shaving €50bn from public spending between 2015 and 2017.

As Tuesday’s vote took place in parliament, the combative Mr Valls was meanwhile exchanging blows with France’s most radical trade unions over proposals to ease conditions in the country’s highly regulated labour market.

Three unions, including the communist-backed CGT and the Force Ouvriere, refused to sit down with the government and employers at a special conference on Tuesday called by Mr Hollande to launch negotiations on a raft of labour market issues. They decried Mr Valls’s call for a simplification of the 3,000 page labour code and what they, like the rebel MPs, see as the responsibility pact’s ‘gifts’ to business.

Mr Valls, banking on more moderate unions to stay at the table, said it was incomprehensible” to boycott the talks, aimed at triggering a much-needed boost to employment, currently running at 10 per cent of the workforce.

Since Mr Hollande made him prime minister after the Socialists suffered a terrific drubbing in local elections at the end of March, Mr Valls has not ceased to bang the drum for change. “Yes, reform can cause upset, disturb customs and upset vested interests,” he said in a speech at the weekend. “But reform will set the country back on its feet.”

Mr Hollande has let the rather stern figure of Mr Valls take the lead on the reform front – concentrating more in public on ceremonial events such as the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings in early June.

It is too early to say whether it is really working for either man. But Mr Hollande’s abysmal poll ratings at least show signs of stabilising. One poll this week showed his approval rating notching up two points to 22 per cent from last month.

Mr Valls remains much more popular than his boss, by some 20 points or more. He will be fervently hoping that his firm hand on the government tiller – so lacking over the past two years – will have the effect of dragging up Mr Hollande’s ratings, not sinking his own.