French-American Foundation Weekly Brief highlights political, economic and cultural news stories related to France and French-American relations as well as trans-Atlantic and European issues.
On Monday, July 2, the Court of Auditors announced that France now faces tough budget cuts in order to meet its EU deficit goal of 4.5 percent of GDP by the end of the year as its newest report showed that economic growth for the nation will be around 0.4 percent for 2012, lower than the 0.7 percent upon which the annual budget had been based.
France
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On Monday, July 2, the Court of Auditors announced that France now faces tough budget cuts in order to meet its EU deficit goal of 4.5 percent of GDP by the end of the year as its newest report showed that economic growth for the nation will be around 0.4 percent for 2012, lower than the 0.7 percent upon which the annual budget had been based, La Croix and Reuters reported. Elected on an anti-austerity campaign, President François Hollande now faces the issues of being caught in a debt spiral or cutting public spending, a decision sure to be unpopular with his electorate. NPR further explored this story, saying that Hollande will not be damaged too much by this announcement, as the middle-class will largely be sheltered from these austerity plans.
Deputy Minister for the Family Dominique Bertolotti announced on Friday, June 29, that same-sex couples will be permitted to marry by the end of 2013, Le Parisien reported. The bill, Proposition 31, would make France the eighth European country to ratify gay marriage and will give prospective couples full adoption rights. However, hostile organizations are beginning to mobilize, as covered by Le Figaro. Careful to avoid an official stand on Proposition 31, François Fondard, the president of the National Union of Familial Associations (UNAF) declared that his interest in banning gay couples from marrying is “founded on the interest of the child.” Proposition 31 is expected to be announced to the National Assembly at the end of their annual hiatus in September.
The end of an era was marked when the French Minitel system, a proto-Internet communications terminal was permanently disconnected on Saturday, June 30, PRI’s The World reported. Developed in 1982, the network allowed users to access servers through a home unit for sites that ranged from pork-price listings to the world’s first adult chat rooms. The Minitel encountered difficulties in exportation overseas, however, allowing the Internet to rise to dominance. It’s downfall is keenly felt in the agricultural communities of Brittany, where it has remained in use for decades. The New York Times explored further, finding that farmers appreciated the Minitel for its efficiency and reliability, necessities while operating in less-than-pristine barns and farmhouses. Agricultural software programs attempting to replace the Minitel have been criticized for their slowness.
As the center-right party Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) attempts to reform itself, party Secretary General Jean-François Copé and Nicholas Sarkozy’s former Prime Minister François Fillon both announced their candidacy for the party’s presidency this past week, RFI and TF1 reported. The UMP has recently found itself in a period of crisis, after the “pink wave” swept the Socialist Party (PS) into the Elysée Palace and took many former député posts previously held by the right. Once expected to run, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Alain Juppé announced that he would not be running in an attempt to avoid “adding to the cacaphony” of the UMP, and that he would not participate in the “scuffling” between the two candidates, Libération reported.
Le Monde provided this week a comprehensive chart of the 500 ministers and advisors named in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
United States
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The Supreme Court announced on Thursday, June 28, its ruling by a margin of 5-4 to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as “Obamacare,” in what will have long-range implications for President Barack Obama’s bid for re-election in November, Le Nouvel Observateur reported. Despite the bill being passed in 2010, it has limped through the appellate courts, being bitterly challenged at every level. The new bill will make it necessary for every American to have some sort of health care in an “individual mandate” by the end of 2014, as well as covering the approximately 50 million people who do not have any health insurance. This part of the law has been contested, considered by its opponents “an unbearable intrusion of the federal government in the everyday life of Americans and a concealed tax,” 20 Minutes stated. The New York Times pondered the long-term results of the Supreme Court decision, both for Obama’s campaign and his place in history, saying that he deserves a place next to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Regan as “presidents who fundamentally altered the course of the country.”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt by Congress on Thursday, June 28, amid allegations that he refused to turn over documents vital to the investigation of Operation “Fast and Furious,” Le Monde and Libération reported. Operation Fast and Furious was a governmental operation that engaged in “gunwalking” – allowing U.S. guns to be shipped into Mexico in order to unearth gun-running organizations. However, the operation met little success and a gun tracked in Fast and Furious was discovered at the scene of a Border Patrol agent’s death. So far, the federal government has refused to prosecute Holder.
The U.S. Air Force announced on Friday, June 29, that at least 31 female officers have been victims of alleged sexual assault by their commanding officers, Libération reported. The Air Force is currently conducting an investigation of 12 instructors for acts supposedly committed on Lackland Base, near San Antonio. The Christian Science Monitor added that, as a result of these allegations, the Air Force is considering using only female officers to train female cadets in order to end this culture of silence, in which 20 percent of all women in the Air Force have been sexually assaulted and less than one in five of these women reported the abuse.
As the California foie gras ban goes into effect on Sunday, July 1, restaurants and various liver-lovers are scrambling to eat their way through reserves of the French delicacy, The Los Angeles Times reported. Heavyweight restaurants catering to the Hollywood such as Petrossian and Chaya Brasserie designed lavish multi-course tasting menus centered around the now-illicit duck or goose liver, the attainment of which involves force-feeding by pipe in a procedure called gavage. On the other side of the Atlantic, the French foie advocates are none too happy upon hearing American opinions of their culinary processes, as covered by Le Point. Citing American concerns of cheese made with unpasteurized milk, French culinary experts believe that this debate is just another example of perceived American superiority, decided without consultation of French traditions. As Martin Malvy, president of Midi-Pyrénnées, tartly put it, “When you raise calves with hormones, when you grow GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) without any knowledge of the consequences, you cannot come give us lessons about gavage.”
Business & Economics
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French President François Hollande announced on Friday, June 29, in the final day of a two-day summit of European leaders, that he will present all measures discussed in one package to be voted by France’s parliament. Included in this package will be a €130-billion growth pact, agreed upon earlier in the week, that would introduce growth-encouraging measures into the European fiscal compact. The leader continued to call for further integration of Europe’s economies, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Le Figaro reported. As Hollande joins fellow European leaders to invest in growth, the pact was seen as a compromise by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Europe’s top promoter of austerity, where the European Budgetary Pact was passed by the requisite two-thirds of parliament on the evening of Friday, June 29, according to La Croix, Bloomberg and Libération.
European airplane manufacturer Airbus announced on Monday, July 1, plans to open its first factory in the United States, MSNBC reported. The France-based aviation giant said the factory, set to open in Mobile, Alabama, will cost $600 million to build and would reach its full production of four planes per month in 2017, creating 1,000 jobs. La Tribune looked at Airbus’ motivation for expanding into the United States, which includes attracting more American buyers and also increasing European-American contracts in the area of defense.
Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the Blackberry smartphone, saw its shares plunge 19 percent on Friday, June 29, after announcing a first-quarter loss of $518 million the day before, TF1 and The Wall Street Journal reported. RIM shares ended the week a $7.39, its lowest level in nine years, as the company announced the delay of the launch of its Blackberry 10 OS to the first quarter of 2013 and a planned workforce reduction of 5,000.
In a huge coup for Apple, a California court banned the tablet Samsung Galaxy Tab from being sold in the United States on Tuesday, June 26, on the grounds that it violated Apple’s patent for the iPad, Le Monde reported. This ruling had been preceded by similar rulings in Australia and Germany, both of which are currently under appeal by Samsung, claiming that Apple is infringing on some of its key patents. These procedures are also pitting two partners against each other, as Apple uses Samsung chips in many of its products.
International
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Mexicans voted on Sunday, July 1, to elect Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party to the presidency, as power returned to the former ruling party after more than a decade in opposition amid an unsettling drug war and economic downturn, The New York Times and Courrier International reported. With about 38 percent of the vote, Peña Nieto brought back into power the centrist party that was removed from the head of the nation in 2000 as Mexico progressed toward a multi-party democracy. While his closest opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, did not concede, awaiting a complete count of votes, current President Felipe Calderón congratulated Peña Nieto on his victory on the evening of Sunday, according to Le Parisien.
After prosecutors concluded their case last month against Radovan Karadzi, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia acquitted on Thursday, June 28, the former Bosnian Serb leader of one charge of genocide. Karadzi still faces ten other counts, and the defense is expected to begin its case as early as October, Le Monde and The Guardian reported. Karadzi’s trial began in October 2009. He was arrested the year before after 13 years in hiding. As the long trial continues, one count of genocide was dropped, as judges said a series of killings by Bosnian Serbs in 1992 did not merit the gravest charge possible in the International Criminal Court, though judges allowed another genocide charge relating to the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, according to AFP.
In the Malian city of Gao, an Islamist rebel group attacked on Wednesday, June 27, buildings held by the secular National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA), breaking a truce between the two rebel movements that had occupied the northern part of the nation, The New York Times. Algerian jihadis arrived to support the Islamist movement on Friday, June 29, and the Islamist groups destroyed a number of religious monuments over the weekend, including a mosque dating back to the 15th century that had been placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, according to Le Nouvel Observateur and Libération.
The Iranian press announced on Monday, June 25, that two men had been sentenced to death for repeated consumption of alcohol in the northeast of the Islamic Republic, Le Figaro reported. Le Point explored the recent rise in illegal consumption of alcohol in Iran, where the substance has been outlawed since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
In Haifa, Israel, the first-ever pageant of Holocaust survivors held on Thursday, June 28, was received with mixed reviews, Le Figaro reported. Organizers coordinated the event as a means of maintaining the memory of the Holocaust, as all 14 finalists told their stories of survival. Opponents of the event said the beauty pageant format trivialized the tragic events, as covered by The New York Times.