Apres Le Non

Charles Paul Freund | May 31, 2005

In France, Raffarin is out as PM, and Dominique "Veto" de Villepin is in. His mission: fix French unemployment while protecting the French economy from "Anglo-Saxon" ideas about markets.

"This struggle requires national mobilization," President Chirac told the French in a televised address. "It will be enacted resolutely in accordance with the French model and not the Anglo-Saxon type of model . . ." The French model, as David Ignatius has pointed out, is to strive to "maintain inflexible management and labor unions, six-week vacations, a 35-hour workweek," etc. The nation's unemployment rate has been about 10 percent for some 15 years.