The French-American Foundation Weekly Brief

The French-American Foundation looks back at what happened in France this week.

France

RFI reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel signed a joint letter urging the European Union to accelerate EU-wide financial regulations, including bans on short selling and credit default swaps of certain kinds of bonds and stocks. This after a “working dinner” scheduled for Monday to smooth over apparent tensions between the two leaders was pushed back by a week, according to Boursier. According to Business Week, Merkel surprised EU leaders last month by unilaterally banning naked sovereign credit-default swaps in Germany, placing blame on “speculators” for market volatility and the recent fall of the Euro.

French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux proposed legislation such that if a naturalized French citizen became polygamous, he would lose his French nationality, according to Le Nouvel Observateur. Immigration minister Eric Besson supported Hortefeux’s proposal, which came about after the husband of a woman arrested for wearing a head-scarf while driving in Nantes was charged with fraud and suspected of polygamy. An article in Le Monde claimed that the data Hortefeux used to back up his proposal-he put the number of  polygamous families in France between 16,000 and 20,000-were 15 years outdated and highly exaggerated.

A French court fined Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux 750 Euros for making racist comments, and ordered that he pay 2,000 Euros to an anti-racism group, according to Rue89. Speaking with a group of activists from the UMP party in 2009, Hortefeux was recorded as saying “We always need one. It’s when there are lots of them that there are problems” of a young member of the party of Algerian origin. Hortefeux claimed that the comments were made about the photos taken at the event, not about Arabs in France, according to the BBC. Certain political figures, such as socialist party spokesman Benoît Hamon, have called for Hortefeux’s resignation over the incident, a suggestion President Sarkozy has rejected.

In an interview with 20 minutes.fr Barbara Dalibard, director of the Voyages division of the SNCF, assured that there were no plans to raise TGV ticket prices over the coming year. On Monday, The Connexion reported that a new law would add 25% to the SNCF’s energy bill if passed, and Le Figaro warned that this could result in higher prices for train passengers.

On Monday, Education Minister Luc Chatel  launched a national conference on the educational timetable, according to L’Humanité. The committee, consisting of individuals chosen from various fields, will examine ways to reorganize the academic calendar to “reconcile school, family and social time.” Compared to schoolchildren in other developed countries, French students currently attend the greatest number of school hours (914) over the shortest number of school days (144). Changes to the calendar-which could potentially include changing the length of the academic week or reducing vacation-would not go into effect until 2014. 

See also: 

– Senegalese base closed:
The BBC reported that France would be closing its military bases in Senegal.

– French hostage in Somalia:
A Somali rebel group issued video of a French hostage it has been holding since last year.