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France
Centre and Right Wing back to school
Article published on the 2008-09-07 Latest update 2008-09-08 06:08 TU
French PM François Fillon, UMP Summer School 2008
Photo: REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
The French centrist parties, Nouveau Centre and Mouvement Démocrate are holding their first ever Summer School, and MoDem leader François Bayrou says his aim is for the party to become the main opposition party. Comments from the sidelines of the UMP, the majority government party's weekend of debate, have kicked up something of a storm.
The MoDem met at a Mediterranean location, Cap Esterel, near Saint-Raphaël and considered how they would position themselves as a serious opposition on a range of issues in French politics arising from reforms passed this summer. Among their special guests was former Socialist foreign minister Hubert Védrine.
As promised in the presidential election in France in 2007, the UMP president Nicolas Sarkozy and his team are giving France a bit of shake-up. The Summer Schools give the different political forces a platform from which to convey their reactions.
The MoDem leader François Bayrou, a candidate in the last presidential election, lashed out at what he called "a regime which misuses tax-payers' money, targets the middle-class, takes arbitrary decisions and practices favouritism".
One of the most contentious new laws, which has drawn much attention at the Summer Schools, creates a new register of potential "bad guys", called Edvige. It lists people from the age of 13 who present symptoms of becoming possible disrupters of public order in France. However, it also includes politicians, and other activists in society.
Not far from where the MoDem is debating, the recently formed Nouveau Centre, a partner in the government, is also holding its first Summer School at La Londe-des-Maures. Its leader, Hervé Morin, the Minister of Defence, called Edvige into question. "Is it useful to centralise information about individuals who have merely sought a political or trade union mandate or who play a significant institutional, economic, social or religious role?" he asked.
The news out of the Summer School of the government UMP in Royan on the West coast of France, seemed defensive. For example, the new capital gains tax, "is not a breach of the tax reductions. We have done a lot for people, in fiscal terms, especially the middle classes," said Prime Minister François Fillon in his closing speech on Sunday, "the new RSA (welfare payments) should serve as a standard for economic and social change."
To those comments the Prime Minister added his negative appraisal of the Socialist Party's Summer School a week ago, saying that it showed the party as: "lacking ideas or inspiration, out-of-touch with the concerns of the French people."
The political parties' Summer Schools also provide them with an opportunity to establish their stands and to test policy ideas ahead of the European elections due in June 2009.
