One recognises the New Year in Paris when the strikes start. On Tuesday the postal workers took to the streets, yesterday it was the turn of rail and energy workers and later this week civil servants, surgeons and teachers will down tools, walk out and remind the public just what they think of the government and its reform plans.
There is no doubt that President Chirac's government harbours great ambitions for economic reform, much of it aimed at the public sector. The same exists in the Italian and German governments, faced as they are with enormous public sector costs. The Italian Prime Minister has weathered five nationwide stoppages since he came to power. The German Chancellor, Mr Schröder, has promised ambitious reform of his country's expensive welfare payments but he shows signs of settling for less than is required.
The French government has already backed down considerably which makes the size of this week's protests surprising. The thumping that Mr Chirac's coalition suffered in last year's regional elections discouraged the government from pursuing reform with the same vigour. The Prime Minister, Mr Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has expressed his determination to push through reforms, especially on the 35-hour working week, but with his personal approval rating down at 31 per cent he may feel that he has little to lose. Mr Chirac, with an eye on the EU referendum in June and ever-conscious of his personal ratings in the opinion polls, may think otherwise.
What is not in dispute is that France cannot create enough jobs. Unemployment is running at almost 10 per cent and while economic growth in 2004 was higher than expected at 3 per cent, much of it came about because of a temporary consumer spending surge. Each of the protests targets the government but for differing reasons. The postal workers are concerned about what will happen to their jobs and rightly so when La Poste, under EU rules, loses its monopoly. The railway workers are fighting government plans to shed a small number of jobs on the basis that, if it succeeds, worse will follow.
The trade unions privately concede that an over-regulated labour market and a far-too-large State sector are the two biggest drags on the economy. Yet none of the unions, understandably, are going to volunteer their members for culling. Mr Chirac will celebrate 10 years in office next May and as things stand he will have little to celebrate. The public sector protests are popular and Mr Raffarin's government is not. Mr Chirac, as he stands on the sideline, needs to decide if he is really the reformer he claims to be or just another survivor.