French public spending policy in crisis
France faces a crisis in every area of public spending: pensions;
welfare; education; health. Governments have been trying to address these
problems since Édouard Balladur's conservative administration in 1993.
There is a well known saying in French government circles: when you want
to drain the swamp, you don't ask the frogs. French government policy is de
haut en bas, or, in the case of Chirac, de hauteur en bas.
Lionel Jospin's socialist government attempted reforms of public sector
finances in 1997, but gave up in the face of national strikes and street
protests organised by the trade unions. Jospin's startling subsequent defeat
in the general election, when he came third to Jean-Marie le Pen's National
Front, is blamed by most commentators on the suicidal split in the left
opened up by opposition to his public sector reforms.
According to Chirac and his former prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin,
the answer is wholesale reform of France's public sector, coupled with
modernisation in the shape of new efficient electronic infrastructures to
cut waste and increase cooperation between government departments.
As part of this move to an efficient modern infrastructure, the
government has inaugurated ADELE (ADminstration ELEctronique). This is
intended as a public sector network of networks, tying together disparate
central government departments with local authorities and other public
agencies.
The government has also targeted individual areas of public finance,
starting last year with pensions. This brought a ferocious response from
trade unions and public sector staff. Although the overall objective was to
curb the growing deficit in French pensions funds, Raffarin's government
joined this to an attempt to improve public sector productivity. The
government also introduced reforms of the education sector into the same
package. The result was to maximise the strength of resistance to the
reforms. France's public sector was hit by a wave of strikes which included
the national health service.
This has set the pattern for the government's subsequent reform attempts,
and help explain why the national health IT programme has become so bogged
down in acrimony. Major policy objectives are confused with a number of
lesser, often irrelevant, tactical issues. Several sectors are targeted
unnecessarily at the same time. Transition periods are truncated, and
strategic reforms, designed for implementation over years, are given
subclauses that entail immediate jobs, pay and benefits cuts.
More
Healthcare reform helped French No vote
France's national disease coding
DMP: the French EPR
The lesson for Europe
To top
|