IF ONLY THE CULTURE WERE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...:

Unemployment casts pall over Chirac's 10 years (Katrin Bennhold, MAY 12, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

Jacques Chirac marked his 10th anniversary as president of France this week, but he has declined to celebrate. It is not hard to see why.

Seventeen days before France votes in a referendum on the European constitution, support for the yes camp appears to be retreating again. With the two sides now neck and neck, the traditionally pro-European left more and more deeply divided on the issue and Chirac's increasingly unpopular prime minister recovering from surgery, the president is looking ever more lonely.

Opponents of the charter continue to score points by insisting that it would encourage the flight of jobs abroad and put France's generous social welfare system at risk. But such fears, officials and analysts say, have less to do with the constitution and more with a two-decade-old phenomenon in France: Chronic unemployment, they say, is the elephant in the room in this campaign - as it has been in so many others.

"If it wasn't for double-digit unemployment this campaign would look completely different," said Jacques Floch, who as a Socialist member of the European affairs committee in France's lower house of Parliament is campaigning daily across the country in favor of a yes vote.

Yes, but then it wouldn't be France.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 12, 2005 12:00 AM