Focus on France Ian Sparks reports from Paris

EURO-REPORT

FOCUS ON... France

Ian Sparks reports from Paris on a controversial move by the French government.

The French government has triggered accusations of ‘treason’ by announcing it is selling half of the Toulouse-Blagnac airport in south-west France – the home of aircraft maker Airbus – to a Chinese-led consortium for €308 million.

The planned 49.99 per cent stake sale of France’s fourth largest airport comes amid a €10 billion selling frenzy of French assets by the government in a bid to fill the country’s near-empty coffers, under pressure from Brussels.

The Symbiose consortium consists of Chinese financial groups the Shandong Hi-Speed Group and Friedmann Pacific Asset Management.

Under the terms of the deal, the Paris government will retain a 10.01 per cent stake, and local authorities a just under 40 per cent stake in the airport which last year saw about 7.5 million passengers pass through its gates, and which the European consortium Airbus uses to test and assemble its planes.

In an interview with regional newspaper La Dépêche du Midi, France’s economy minister Emmanuel Macron defended the sale, saying: “This is not a privatisation but rather that the capital is being opened up with local authorities and the government remaining the main stakeholders, holding 50.01 per cent of the capital.

“We’re not selling the airport, we’re not selling the runways nor the buildings which remain in the government’s ownership.”

But the controversial move has sparked anger from right-wing politicians, with Gaullist MP Nicolas Dupont-Aignan branding the sale as ‘treason’.

Mr Dupont-Aignan, also chairman of the Debout La France (Stand-up France) movement, said: “I am ashamed of this minister who, in order to obey Brussels commissioners, is now selling our country. It is completely absurd and completely uneconomical, because it is the airport for Airbus.

“It is high treason; it means that people who lead us no longer defend the French. There are also fears of espionage on what is the principal centre of the aviation industry.”

Even some lawmakers within the ruling Socialist Party called for the sale to be halted. Socialist Party Senator Marie-Noëlle Lienemann said: “The opening up of the airports to private capital is a scandal comparable to the selling off of France’s motorways by the right. Macron believes he is in Greece where the government sold ports to the Chinese to reduce deficits which continued to increase.”

And National Front Party leader Marine Le Pen described the move as an outright sellout of national interests. She added: “Selling off strategic assets such as this airport to foreign investors is the opposite of politics supporting economic development in the long-term and national independence. This is even more true for Toulouse where Airbus has its headquarters, requiring even more vigilance vis-à-vis all foreign investors in this sector.”

‘The French way’

But a separate sale of French assets fell through for a second time in December when an American tycoon refused to rescue a doomed French tyre factory in frustration at the nation’s ‘stupid’ labour laws.

US tyre giant Titan International’s boss Maurice Taylor branded French unions demands for the takeover as “the dumbest thing in the world.” And he said it was so difficult to do business in France, the nation may as well “become communist.”

He told France Info radio: “You can’t buy Goodyear. Under your laws, we have to take a minimum of 662 or 672 employees. You can’t do that. The most you could take is 333. There’s no business for that plant now. You guys have got to wake up over there and tell the unions: ‘Hey if they’re so smart, they should buy the factory’.

“It’s stupid. It’s the dumbest thing in the world. France should just become communist and then when it goes all bad like Russia did, then maybe you’d have a chance.”

It is Taylor’s second failed attempt to buy the Goodyear plant in Amiens that is threatened with closure and the loss of 1170 jobs. He visited the factory in February last year, and later wrote to France’s then industry minister Arnaud Montebourg branding workers as ‘lazy, overpaid and talking too much’.

He said in the letter published in the Les Echoes financial newspaper: “I have visited the factory several times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three hours and work for three. I told the French union workers this to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!

“Titan is the one with the money and the talent to produce tyres. What does the crazy union have? It has the French government.

“The French farmer wants cheap tyres. He does not care if the tyres come from India or China and these governments are subsidising them. Your government doesn’t care either.”

Mr Taylor’s latest embarrassing assessment of French workers comes as France teeters on the brink of recession and unemployment has risen above three million – the highest level of joblessness in 15 years.

A 2013 global study of working hours also revealed the French worked the fewest hours of any country on Earth. The report by Swiss bank UBS found the French graft for just 1480 hours a year, with 27 days’ annual holiday – meaning they have more free time than any other nation on the planet.

Britons work 1782 hours a year – 301 more than the French – and have 20 days’ holiday a year, making it the world’s 36th most lazy nation, it was found. n