The French-American Foundation Weekly Brief

France

On Wednesday, September 22, The New York Times published an article detailing the outreach efforts the US Embassy in Paris has made to bolster America’s image in poor Parisian suburbs since September 11, especially among Muslims. Charles H. Rivkin, the American ambassador to France, said that the US saw potential in the banlieues, which could generate some of the “next generation of leaders in France.” To that end, the embassy has sponsored urban renewal projects, festivals, and conferences, assisted minority politicians, and sent minority participants on the International Visitor Leadership Program, which sends a number of French entrepreneurs and politicians on visits to the US each year. According to the paper, anti-American sentiment has all but disappeared in the suburbs. Gilbert Roger, the mayor of Bondy, a suburb northeast of Paris, argued that residents felt neglected and stigmatized by France, and saw greater “deference and respect” in the recent US attention given the suburbs. 

On Wednesday, September 22, Time commented on a string of recent security threats that have mobilize French forces and put French officials on high alert. France sent 80 military officers to Niger on Sunday and Prime Minister François Fillon declared that France was “at war” against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The terrorist group has claimed responsibility for last week’s kidnapping of five French citizens (employees of the French-owned nuclear company Areva) from their homes inNiger. Five days after the Niger kidnapping, three French citizens were abducted from a boat off the coast of Nigeria in an unrelated attack that French Defense Minister Hervé Morin called a “classic act of piracy.” 

Speaking at the UN Millennium Goals summit, President Sarkozy urged other world leaders to step up their commitments to combat global poverty and get back on track to fulfilling the 15-year goals they set in 2000. Sarkozy announced that France would maintain its current $10 billion annual contribution to fight global poverty, and augment its donation to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (for which France is the second-largest contributor after the US) by 20 percent over the next three years. He also proposed a small tax on financial transactions, which would generate $35 billion a year toward the fight against poverty. The AP reported that many poor countries have seen little progress on the Millennium Development Goals, which set out to reduce extreme poverty by half, ensure primary education for all children, halt the spread of AIDS and greatly reduce infant mortality rates, among other aims.

In the midst of the recent kerfuffle over retirement reform in France, Le Point reported on a study by the insurance company Aviva showing that, due to a variety of shifting factors (including increased life expectancies), Europe now faces a 1,900 billion euro pension shortfall. While Germany has the greatest total pension gap at 470 billion euros, France is fourth on the list, missing 243 billion euros needed to ensure a “decent pension” for its citizens planning to retire between 2011 and 2051. According to Le Point, each French citizen would need to save about 8,000 euros each year to make up for that deficit.

On Wednesday, September 22, the Galeries Nationales at the Grand Palais in Paris opened its massive Claude Monet exhibition, which will run through January 24, and is the largest retrospective devoted to the Impressionist master in 30 years. The exhibition will cover Monet’s entire career, and will include 176 paintings from 60 international museums, with one notable omission: 1874’s “Impression, soleil levant” painting, which gave the Impressionist movement its name. Libération published a photo gallery of some of the paintings on display in the exhibition, and L’Express argued that in spite of the attitude of “condescension” often afforded Monet in France, the Paris exhibition shows that “the master of Giverny is in reality a very important painter.”