PARIS: The good news keeps coming for the French economy: data published Thursday showed unemployment at its lowest level since 2009 while the head of the IMF praised recent reforms by President Emmanuel Macron.
Long seen as the weakest of Europe’s major economies, French GDP is expanding at its highest rate in years, with optimism underpinned by the pro-business agenda being implemented by the government.
Statistics agency INSEE said Thursday that unemployment had fallen to 8.9 percent nation-wide in the final quarter of 2017, down 0.7 percentage points to its lowest level since 2009.
The uptick in the jobs market has led some companies to warn about skills shortages, a dramatic turnaround for an economy that has consistently lagged its better performing neighbors.
“We’ve had new job creation at a very high level in 2017 which was sufficient to reduce unemployment,” commented economist Bruno Ducoudre at the OFCE economic institute.
On a day of bumper announcements, online giant Amazon also said that it planned to create 2,000 new jobs in France in 2018, most of them in its warehouses.
Economists stress that the improving conditions are partly down to stronger growth across Europe generally, as well as reforms launched by previous president Francois Hollande.
But the head of the International Monetary Fund emphasised Thursday the role of recent policy changes under Macron.
“We need to recognize clearly the quality and the ambition of the reforms that have been started,” Christine Lagarde said on Thursday during a visit to the economy ministry in Paris.
Macron, a 40-year-old centrist elected in May, has promised a “transformation” of the economy and social system to make France an easier place to start companies and more attractive for investors.
His first annual budget cut taxes on companies and profits on financial investments, while his government is preparing a second wave of reforms focused on improving training for workers and the unemployed.
Economic growth is forecast to be around 2.0 percent in 2018, while expansion of 1.9 percent in 2017 was the highest level in six years, according to INSEE.
Tackling mass unemployment is Macron’s number one priority, with joblessness a scourge for high-poverty areas around major cities and felt particularly acutely by the under 25s.
Around 20 percent of young people are out of work, according to the INSEE figures, down from around 25 percent.
Macron has promised to bring the overall unemployment level down to 7.0 percent by the end of his term in 2022, but early complaints about skills shortages underline the scale of the task.
France has high levels of long-term unemployed workers who are unskilled, making them unattractive for companies looking to take on new staff.
A survey by INSEE in October found that half of companies in the construction sector were having difficulty finding skilled labor, while 38 percent of industrial groups faced the same problem.
“Everything is just starting for us,” Economy Minister Economy Minister Bruno commented as he played down the unemployment figures. “I think that for results, notably on the jobs front, we will need two years.”
Despite the improving economy, Macron’s approval ratings remain low and volatile, with a new survey out on Wednesday showing him down five points in February to 35 percent.
This makes him less popular than his predecessor Francois Hollande at the same point in his term in office, the polling group Ispos said.
Other surveys have shown that French people are worried about their own household budgets and are not convinced that Macron’s reforms will deliver improvements in their own lives.
The young president, a former investment banker, has been labelled the “president of the rich” by opponents to his pro-business agenda that has so far favored company owners.
“I’m not obsessed at this stage whether people have confidence in me or not for their purchasing power because if someone asks you a question about it, we’re all the same, we want more,” Macron told reporters on Tuesday.
He ruled out the “quick response” favored by French governments in the past which would see increased public spending or tax cuts financed by debt.
France met EU rules on its public finances for the first time in a decade last year by reporting a deficit under 3.0 percent of GDP, but the country’s public finance watchdog has urged the government to go further.
“We need to decrease our debt because it makes us vulnerable to an increase in interest rates,” Le Maire added on Thursday, saying that increased tax revenues generated by additional growth in 2018 would be used for this purpose.
Macron praised as French economy powers ahead
Macron praised as French economy powers ahead
UK defense minister says China sending ‘lethal aid’ to Russia for Ukraine war
LONDON: China is sending “lethal aid” to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine, Britain’s defense minister Grant Shapps said on Wednesday.
“Today I can reveal that we have evidence that Russia and China are collaborating on combat equipment for use in Ukraine,” he said in a speech at a London conference.
Shapps warned that NATO needed to “wake up” and bolster defense spending across the alliance.
“US and British defense intelligence can reveal that lethal aid is now flowing from China to Russia and into Ukraine.”
He argued that democratic states should make a “full-throated case” for freedoms that are dependent on the international order, meaning “we need more allies and partners” worldwide.
“It’s time for the world to wake up. And that means translating this moment to concrete plans and capabilities. And that starts with laying the foundations for an alliance-wide increase in spending on our collective deterrent,” he said.
China and Russia’s strategic partnership has only grown closer since the invasion of Ukraine, but Beijing has rebuffed Western claims that it is aiding Moscow’s war effort.
China has also offered a critical lifeline to Russia’s isolated economy, with trade booming since the invasion and hitting $240 billion in 2023, according to Chinese customs figures.
US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, however, appeared to take issue with some of Shapps’s comments.
He said the possibility that China might “provide weapons directly — lethal assistance — to Russia” had been a concern earlier, but that “we have not seen that to date.”
The United States did though have a “concern about what China’s doing to fuel Russia’s war machine, not giving weapons directly, but providing inputs to Russia’s defense industrial base,” he added.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin put on a strong show of unity during a meeting in Beijing earlier this month.
Xi said in a statement following talks with Putin during his visit that the two sides agreed on the need for a “political solution” to resolve the war.
Colombia to open embassy in Ramallah
BOGOTA: Colombia, whose president has described Israel’s campaign in Gaza as “genocidal,” said Wednesday it will open an embassy in Ramallah in the Palestinian territories.
Foreign Minister Luis Murillo told reporters that President Gustavo Petro — an ardent critic of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu — had given instructions “that we install the embassy of Colombia in Ramallah” in the West Bank.
The announcement came on the same day Ireland, Norway and Spain announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, more than seven months into the devastating Gaza war.
An unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7 resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also took 252 hostages, 124 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,709 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Colombia severed ties with Israel as Petro called Netanyahu “genocidal.”
Earlier this month, he called for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for the Israeli leader.
On Monday, the prosecutor of that court said he has requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his defense minister and top Hamas leaders.
UCLA police chief reassigned following criticism over handling of campus demonstrations
- The reassignment of Thomas follows UCLA’s May 5 announcement of the creation of a new chief safety officer position
LOS ANGELES: The police chief at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been reassigned following criticism over his handling of recent campus demonstrations that included a mob attacking a pro-Palestinian encampment.
Chief John Thomas was temporarily reassigned Tuesday “pending an examination of our security processes,” said Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, in a statement released Wednesday.
The Daily Bruin reported late Tuesday that Thomas said in a text to the campus newspaper, “There’s been a lot going on and, I learned late yesterday that I’m temporarily reassigned from my duties as chief.”
Neither Osako nor Thomas identified his reassigned role.
The reassignment of Thomas follows UCLA’s May 5 announcement of the creation of a new chief safety officer position to oversee campus security operations.
On April 30, counterdemonstrators attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers. Fighting continued for several hours before police stepped in, and no one was arrested. At least 15 protesters suffered injuries.
Thomas told the Los Angeles Times in early May that he did “everything I could” to provide security and keep students safe during days of strife that left UCLA shaken.
But his response was roundly criticized and prompted Chancellor Gene Block to order a review of campus security procedures. Block then announced that Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief, would lead a new Office of Campus Safety that will oversee the UCLA Police Department.
“To best protect our community moving forward, urgent changes are needed in how we administer safety operations,” Block said in the May 5 statement.
Sporadic disruptions continued following the dismantling of a pro-Palestinian encampment and some 200 arrests on April 30.
Block has been summoned to Washington by a Republican-led House committee to testify Thursday about the protests on the Los Angeles campus.
The union that represents more than 250 officers who police the 10 UC campuses criticized Thomas’ reassignment.
“The UCLA administration owns the failure of any protest response, and the public should reject their attempts to shift blame to law enforcement,” Wade Stern, president of the Federated University Peace Officers’ Association, said in a statement Wednesday. “The response to protests appears ad hoc and devoid of the structured planning mandated by the UC system.”
Pentagon chief tells Israel of need to coordinate humanitarian, military Gaza operations
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant in a call on Wednesday of the need for an effective mechanism to coordinate humanitarian and military operations in Gaza, the Pentagon said.
Trump claims standard FBI warrant shows Biden wanted him dead
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump drew disbelief — and some support — Wednesday after suggesting that standard language from an FBI search warrant executed in 2022 on his Florida mansion showed that President Joe Biden wanted armed agents to shoot him.
Trump’s latest incendiary claim was in response to a court filing outlining plans for the FBI search at the Mar-a-Lago club, where he kept classified national security documents after leaving the White House.
The filing included standard FBI wording stating that agents are allowed to use deadly force if someone is in imminent danger.
But Trump, who is running to unseat Biden in November’s election, distorted the statement to say that it showed the Justice Department was ready to shoot him and harm his family.
“It’s just been revealed that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable,” Trump said Tuesday in a fundraising email shared by US media.
“Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger. He thinks he can frighten me, intimidate me, and KNOCK ME DOWN!“
The wild remarks add to the pile of false claims made by Trump against Biden, whom he has repeatedly accused without evidence of weaponizing the justice system to target him.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for all lawmakers to condemn Trump’s “outlandish and dangerous” remarks in a speech in the upper chamber of Congress.
“We cannot let this man, Donald Trump, or anybody else, throw these kinds of matches to light flames that could burn our democracy,” he said.
David Axelrod, a White House aide under Barack Obama, called Trump’s comments “patently nuts...and dangerously provocative” in a post on X.
But several of Trump’s staunchest allies joined Trump in misrepresenting the court filing.
Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X that the Justice Department and the FBI “gave the green light” to assassinate Trump.
On the day of the raid, Trump was not on Florida but at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.
The FBI issued a rare statement, saying “there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”
The bureau — which recovered more than 100 classified documents, including some marked top secret — got the go-ahead for the raid from a federal judge after the government tried for months to get the records back.
The billionaire is accused of willfully retaining national defense information and obstructing government efforts to recover it.
He denies 40 felony charges, but the trial has been indefinitely postponed.
In a statement to AFP, the Trump campaign said reporting of the fundraising email was “a sickening attempt to run cover for Joe Biden who is the most corrupt president in history and a threat to our democracy.”
