FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac's 11th annual Bastille Day television interview was billed in advance as the most difficult he has faced. Still reeling from defeats in the constitutional treaty referendum, the Brussels summit and the loss of the Olympic games to London, Mr Chirac gave a competent but uninspiring performance.
A poll published by Le Parisien newspaper on Wednesday showed that only 32 per cent of French people have confidence in Mr Chirac.
Despite unrelenting criticism, Mr Chirac said: "I absolutely do not feel on the defensive. Perhaps I am not sensitive enough. . . I feel sure of myself because the values I defend are sure values."
"Aren't you jealous of Tony Blair?" was the cruellest question asked by Patrick Poivre d'Arvor. France's best known television presenter listed the British prime minister's accomplishments: a growth rate that is twice that of France; unemployment half the French rate. Not only did Mr Blair win a recent election, the International Olympics Committee gave London the 2012 summer games.
"No, I am not jealous," Mr Chirac said. "I do not believe the British model is a model that we should envy or copy. Their unemployment is a lot lower. But if you take our health policy, the fight on poverty, you see that we are much better placed."
Mr Chirac dodged the question of whether the French voted against him when they rejected the constitutional treaty. "I do not feel humiliated," he said. "I drew energy from the message of the French on May 29th, a new ambition which the prime minister expressed, to go forward in a certain number of areas."
The message of the referendum, the president said, was "a questioning by the French about their qualities, their faults, their model, their worries, a strong message." His compatriots "expressed expectations, fears with respect to globalisation, from which they do not feel protected."
At the government ministers' weekly breakfast on Tuesday, Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister who intends to succeed Mr Chirac, ridiculed the ritual of the July 14th interview. "Why do we perpetuate this tradition when there's nothing happening and the French are thinking about their holidays?" Mr Sarkozy said. The president should speak "only when he has something to say," he added.
Asked whether the ritual was worthwhile, the president said: "For me, without a doubt, because it enabled me to tell you clearly about a certain number of ambitions." Mr Chirac refused to rule out a third term for himself, saying, "You will know when the time comes, at the right moment."
He took care not to criticise Mr Sarkozy, as he did last July 14th, saying that as president he takes decisions in concert with the government, which carries them out. Last year, he said of Mr Sarkozy: "I decide. He obeys."
In another sign of the shifting balance of power, Mr Sarkozy has made the release of repeat offenders an issue in France. Mr Chirac noted that for the first time he excluded all repeat offenders from his July 14th pardon.
Asked repeatedly about France's 10.2 per cent unemployment, Mr Chirac said: "We need to combat this problem, which is a scourge. For 20 years, France has been operating in a system that accepts unemployment, that makes it acceptable in a way."
Critics have asked why, if it were possible to reduce joblessness in France, Mr Chirac has not done so in 10 years in office. The president said there are "psychological moments when it is possible to do things", implying that this is one. For too long, France has "accompanied" the unemployed rather than encouraging them to seek work, he said.
On Europe, Mr Chirac said he is "not disposed to making the least concession on the Common Agricultural Policy", as demanded by Mr Blair. And he was determined to see that EU directives on services and working hours, which France oppose, do not pass.
When asked if presidential authority has collapsed in France, Mr Chirac fell back on his favourite subject, foreign policy. "Abroad, certainly not," he said. At the G8 summit in Scotland, all of France's conditions on climate change had been fulfilled, he said. And on aid to Africa: "It was France that made all the proposals."