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An amusing number.

The Times - To Save France
Sarkozy should make the most of Attali’s liberal vision

All political leaders love to order up sweeping state-of-the-nation reports, which they laud to the heavens and consign discreetly to the pending tray. The mission Nicolas Sarkozy gave last August to Jacques Attali, France’s ever-fashionable economic guru, was hugely ambitious. His task force was to advise how to add at least 1 per cent to France’s growth, cut unemployment from 8 to 5 per cent and reduce the public debt burden sharply. Mr Attali promised to report back in three pages. Brevity he did not achieve. The modernising plan for France that he presents to President Sarkozy tomorrow runs to 20 core objectives and more than 300 “decisions”. …

To many voters, the most dramatic changes since then have been in their President’s lively private life. The perception that there is more flash than substance is not entirely fair. Reforms marked “too difficult” by Chirac governments are under way. The insane 35-hour working week is still on the statute book, but its venom has been drawn. In practice, people may now work as long as they want and their employers will let them, and get tax breaks for doing so into the bargain. The unions, surprisingly, have agreed to relax France’s impossibly rigid labour laws, under which temporary contracts expire automatically after six months. To have got thus far is no mean feat. But perceptions matter, and in the absence of a credible grand strategy, Mr Sarkozy’s rash pledge to put more spending money in French pockets is being thrown back at him by voters worried by the weakening economy. He should make the Attali plan his shield. It aims to transform France, and for once, here is a report that could do what it says on the packet.

The report’s motto could be William Blake’s “damn braces, bless relaxes”. Its whole accent is on liberalising and opening up; in commerce and the professions, in business opportunities, educational horizons and social mobility. Its bonfires would be of restrictions: on entry quotas for the professions (and taxis), on anticompetition restrictions on the location of shops; on the red tape and preemptive taxes that inhibit business start-ups, and the laws that force everyone to retire at 60. Many of these ideas would be banal in this country, but are revolutionary in France. Mr Sarkozy will have to pick his battles. It would be wonderful to remove a thick layer of French bureaucracy by abolishing France’s 100 départements, but is unlikely to be possible. To convert blueprint into strategy, Mr Sarkozy will need to turn 300 pages back to three, and then proceed at full speed to implement the tasks he selects.

“Insane,” “impossibly,” “revolutionary”… Fun words, too.