Can you cut two national holidays to save France from the Long Mountain?

Prime Minister Francois Bayro has put the cat among the pigeons, promising to cut two of France’s national holidays to save the country’s finances.

Supplied enough, his proposal on Tuesday to be an ax on the Easter Monday and May 8 the Houses caused a howl from the left and the populist right – with their own centrists and conservative right, expressing the guard at the best case.

In a country with such a strong tradition of workers’ protest, the sudden removal of two legal weekends will never be an easy sale.

In essence, men and women will be made to work two additional days a year without increasing the salary. Profitment profit would help with the withdrawal of the country of its ever -deepening debt hole.

The French are really very attached to their holidaysS

May is expected with joy every year, not only because it heralds spring – but also because of the sequence of the long weekends that regularly happen.

If May 1 (workers’ day) and May 8, marking the end of World War II, fall on Tuesday or Thursday, then the weekends become four -day treats, because Monday and Friday will automatically be taken as a holiday.

On top of that there is an ascension (always Thursday) plus Easter Monday and Whit Monday (or Pentecost).

If the church calendar is obliged, the early Easter can be combined with May 1 or 8 to provide not only a Pont or bridge-demonstrates a four-day weekend covering Monday or Friday, but a real five or six days viaduct (Viaduct)S

November is another holiday of the holidays, with all the saints of the first of the month and the truce of the 11th, offering relief from the autumn blues. And on top of that there are known “RTT” days that many receive in exchange for work more than the legal 35 hours a week.

But before we fall into a humorous complacency of “those incredibly lazy French and their God’s right to endless stay”, we must keep in mind several other considerations.

FirstFar from the popular image, the French actually have less national holidays than average for Europeans.

France has 11, similar to Germany, the Netherlands and us.

Slovakia has the largest, with 15, and England, Wales and the Netherlands have at least 8.

Ireland and Denmark have 10.

SecondlyAccording to the United Kingdom National Statistics Service, French productivity (worker production) is 18% higher than that of the UK, so any gloom for holidays from the whole channel is wrong.

ThirdThis is not the first time in recent years France has offered AX national holidays. This has happened before – and works (type).

In 2003, the conservative government with President Jacques Chirak wanted to do something radically after the deadly heat wave of that summer, which died 15,000 people.

So Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Rafarin decided to turn Whit on Monday into Solidarity DayS People would work instead of taking the day off, and the money received by employers would be paid to the government as a fund to help the elderly and disabled people.

There was a protest and a few years later the change was soaked, so now the day of solidarity is voluntary. All this is extremely confusing and no one really understands how it works, but on Monday, which is not Whit, it still generates 3 billion euros ($ 2.6 billion; $ 3.5 billion) every year in receipts.

Another precedent returned to the 1950s and Charles de Gaulle.

Recently appointed president, in 1959 he reached the win on May 8 in Europe, saying that the country could not afford it. It was restored in 1981 by socialist Francois Mitterrand.

Bayrou seems to scrape two holidays with a bold offer to reduce debt

So when the Greens accused Bairu on Tuesday for trying to “wipe away from the collective memory of the eradication of Nazism”, it was quite easy for Minister Benjamin Hadad to say: “In fact, De Gaulle did this for the first time and I seem to have played a role in the eroding of Nazism.”

None of this means that Bayrou is more likely to see his proposals to be real.

The truth is that the Prime Minister is in a position with almost complete impotence – a government without a majority in parliament, which can fall at any minute if the opposition groups decide.

But in a strange way, this greatness gave Bair the freedom to say what he thinks.

If his budget proposals are unlikely to be voted on through the meeting – and the chances are practically zero – then he can give the French the unattended truth.

The economic situation is terrible, he said.

Every second that passes, France has another 5,000 euros debt.

Today it is 3.3tn €. In these circumstances, Byiro believes that we may need to rethink the way we live. And work.