Macron Makes a Move to Attract Talent to France

https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/870407981044834304/photo/1

Tim Smith sent me a link today to a new website meant to attract highly-skilled migrants to France. The title of the website is a riff off the US President's slogan "Make America Great Again" and it implies that Trump is a provincial person who doesn't care about the rest of the world and who has abdicated any claims to US leadership in this international fight against global warming. Very deft. Here's the link (and after reading the home page who wouldn't click on it if only out of curiosity).

Make Our Planet Great Again

It's well done.  Very VERY well done.  What makes it so in my eyes?  The first is the impeccable timing.  This is the right moment to strike when Americans are reeling over the US withdrawal from the Paris accord.  I'm amazed that they got it up so fast and coordinated it so well with a social media campaign which says to me that Macron has a very competent and well-organized communication staff.  The personal pitch itself is inspiring:  "We are ONE planet and Together, we can make a difference."  And it extols the virtues of France and positions her as a leader in a winnable fight for the planet. "France has always led fights for human rights. Today, more than ever, we are determined to lead (and win!) this battle on climate change."   And then at the bottom of the page is a big clickable field entitled "I want to make the planet great again."

After  Macron's pitch the site gently guides the potential migrant/expatriate interested in working on climate change though a series of open and closed questions.  I use the word "gentle" because none of the questions are complicated or require detailed information.  They don't ask about degrees or experience.  There's just a drop-down menu on the first page that asks if you are a researcher/teacher, entrepreneur, student, NGO worker, or other. And then a second field that asks what country (and in the case of the US, what state) you come from.

This is followed by open fields where you answer questions like "I'm fighting climate change because...," "I currently work on....," and "My dream is to..."  That's a rare chance for a potential migrant to make his/her pitch in his own words.   Nice.  And the final page takes you straight back to Macron's pitch for France, "Your new Homeland." And finally there is a big clickable button on the bottom of the page that says, "I'm coming to France."

Wow.  Talk about casting a wide net.  Talk about mad communication skills.  The other countries competing for the highly-skilled should take note.  I think it's better than 5 Reasons to Work in Sweden which I already thought was pretty good.

Have a look and tell me what you think.

Voting in the 11th District

Residents, native and foreign, in countries around the world may be surprised to learn that they are living in a legislative district of the French parliament.  Of course, these political boundaries are really only relevant to French citizens. (Or are they?) The rest of us (citizens and migrants of other countries alike) need pay no attention to them - unless they are as curious as I am about what they mean and how they work.

There are a total of 11 French overseas voting districts around the world.  Here is what the world looks like during a French election:

From http://www.politiquemania.com/forum/2012-legislatives-f31/les-circonscriptions-des-francais-etablis-hors-france-t469.html

In each district the French abroad elect a representative (député) for the National Assembly (577 total seats for all districts at home or abroad) for a 5 year term.  The French abroad did have had senators for some time but it was only in 2012 that the first representatives of the French abroad were elected and installed in the lower house of the French parliament.

The 1st district is the US and Canada and they are represented at this time by Frédéric Lefebvre.  The 11th district includes Eastern Europe, Asia,  and Oceania - from the Kara, Barents and Laptev seas all the way south to the Indian Ocean and the Tasman Sea.  The current representative for this district is Thierry Mariani.  Follow the links to find out what they have done and what they are working on.  Full disclosure:  I have voters in my family in both districts.

There is no rule that candidates must live in or have connections to the overseas district they will represent.  And neither Mariani and  Lefebvre appear to have lived abroad, though Mariani has a Russian (naturalized French) wife and both candidates have travelled widely.  

Is that an issue?  Well, Mariani is running for a second term but it just so happens that there are two candidate challenging him for this seat who are a long-term residents of Asia:  Francis Nizet and Anne Genetet.  Both are making overseas experience a campaign issue.

Francis Nizet has been a French abroad for nearly 30 years. He has lived and worked in Africa, Southeast Asia and now lives in Beijing, China with his family.  An engineer by training and profession, he now a professor of science at a Chinese university.  His running-mate (the person who would replace him if he were incapacitated) is Françoise Nédélec a lawyer by training who moved to China in 1994, first to Shanghai and then to Beijing where she is now the director of the Latin Languages program at the International School of Beijing. 

Anne Genetet has lived in Singapore for over 10 years.  A doctor by training and profession in France, she was "deskilled" in Singapore because she could not get her professional credentials recognized.  (Yes, folks, that is part of the "real world of many expat/migrants.)  So she became a consultant and journalist.  

Both of these candidates are playing up their experience living abroad saying essentially, "We know the concerns of our fellow French expatriates because we are you."   "Je connais vos preoccupations, je saurai faire avancer ces dossiers avec tenacite." (I know your concerns and I will know how to tenaciously make progress on those issues.") said Francis Nizet. In an interview Genetet talked about the positive reactions of her compatriots abroad to her candidacy saying, "What I've heard from the people I've met is that they are so happy to have a candidate who knows what it's like to be a French national living abroad."

And that raises an interesting question, doesn't it?  If you voted from abroad and had direct representation would you rather have a representative who has also lived abroad (perhaps in your region)?  Or would you prefer to elect someone well connected to the political world in the home country?

Attack in Paris

Late this morning I was at the American church and as I and a friend were walking out on the way to lunch, the staff at the church gave us the news that there had been a shooting in the 11th district and that the church was closed down - standard, they said, when this happens.  The friend I was with lives in that part of town and was on his cellphone immediately.  Quite a relief to him to hear his family on the phone.

It was a horrendous attack. I will not say more here about it because I think Arun's post is perfect and he is updating it with links and commentary as more information comes in.  I invite you to head over there and read about what happened:

I am Charlie

After I posted this I had an urge to pick up St. Augustine and find this passage.  Not sure why it inspires me but I thought I would share parts of it with you.  Eternal questions that we still struggle to with :

"Where then is evil, and what is its source, and how has it crept into the Creation?  What is its root, what is its seed?  Can it be that it is wholly without being?  But why should we fear and be on guard against what is not?  Or if our fear of it is groundless, then our very fear is itself an evil thing...Whence then is evil, since God who is good made all things good?"  

French Politicians and the Press

Writing about the Hollande affair last week I said, "The Powers That Be in this country seem to be a bit behind the times. Sleeping with the mainstream media (and I mean that both figuratively and literally) no longer means that you can keep the lid on your private affairs if you are a public person."

That's a statement that merits explanation because what I am alluding to is a real problem in the Hexagon:  a much bigger problem than a politician with a complicated love life.

What I'm referring to is the incestuous relationship between French politicians and the mainstream media.  A large number of high-level politicians and bureaucrats have spouses or love interests who are also journalists.  That, in and of itself, would not necessarily be a problem - whenever two groups get close it's not unusual that bonds are formed and that relationships become personal as well as professional.  One of my favorite authors Robert D. Kaplan, for example, has very strong ties to the U.S. military.  His long acquaintance with that institution and the people in it surely impact his writing.  But this is well-known and those who review his writing pull no punches when they point out that he is serving certain interests when he publishes yet another well-written (but very sympatique) piece about the U.S. Marines.

Such exposure of the interests of the writer and his or her relationship to his subject is not the order of the day here in France.  When a French journalist writes an article about a politician, or a talking head interviews one, the context is rarely revealed.  Does it make a difference?  Yes.  Knowing that this or that politician is the lover, spouse, god-father or a very close friend is relevant to what is being said by that journalist about that person.

In the supposed defense of la vie privée is the press here really arguing that it isn't?  That it makes no difference whatsoever when a journalist wife is writing about or interviewing her politician spouse?  As an American I am often accused of a certain naïveté, but asking me to believe that nonsense is really to take me for an imbecile.   There is a clear conflict of interest and you don't have to be an énarque to see it.

We have seen the result of these semi-hidden relationships between members of the press and the political class.  In Jean Quatremer's book Sexe, mensonges et médias he demonstrates how much damage this does to the French press and just how poorly it serves the French public:  story after story killed; an outright refusal to even investigate when that might do political damage; and gushing interviews with no serious questions asked.

Quatremer says that it even goes so far as to silence many who want to do real investigative journalism - the kind that (in that now trite anglo-saxon phrase) "speaks truth to power."  All this gives the impression that the press in France is, in fact, complicit in its own subjugation  and has exchanged liberty for security.

Two days ago in his blog Coulisse de Bruxelles Quatremer once again wrote about this old deal 
with the devil and its implications for the future of the press in the Hexagon.

"Manifestement, et c’est sans doute l’une des clefs de la crise gravissime que la presse d’information traverse, les journalistes continuent à faire des journaux du XXème siècle au XXIème siècle, des journaux où il est normal de remercier le Président de la République de vous « permettre » de poser une question, des journaux où la déférence l’emporte sur l’irrévérence, des journaux où l’on n’a toujours pas compris que le net avait fait exploser la sphère privée et la façon dont se fait et se traite l’information. La presse française a été justement moquée au lendemain de la dernière conférence de presse présidentielle par ses collègues étrangers: comment, voilà un beau scandale sexuel dont les salons parisiens raffolent et dont les implications politiques et sécuritaires sont multiples et les questions sont aussi rares que précautionneuses?" 

("Clearly, and this is undoubtedly one of the keys to the very serious crisis facing the news media, journalists continue to write twentieth century news in the twenty-first century. News where it is normal to thank the President of the Republic when he "allows" you to ask a question; news where deference outweighs irreverence; news where they have not yet understood that the Internet has exposed the private sphere and the manner in which information is made and managed. The French press has been justly ridiculed after the last presidential press conference by their foreign colleagues: Here is a wonderful sex scandal (adored by Parisian salons) where the political and security implications are many, but the question are both rare and cautious.")

The great journalist Edward R. Murrow once said "To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful." The French press frequently fails this test on all counts.  Lying by omission is still lying.

Hadopi

Opened up the EU Observer this morning and lo and behold there was this headline:

France scraps online piracy law.

They are referring to what is commonly called "Hadopi", which is actually the name of the government agency, the Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet.  The French law behind it was first proposed in 2008 with the support of many film, music and book authors (the "creatives") because it was designed to stop illegal downloading and to protect their rights to their artistic and literary property.

However,  the rather draconian penalties which included cutting the Internet access of repeat offenders, were widely criticized.  In the English language media Hadopi was often referred to as a "three strikes law."

Though it was fiercely debated in France, and there were many accusations of "dirty tricks",  it did pass parliament in 2009, and a version of it survived scrutiny by the French Conseil Constitutionnel (Constitutional Council).

In a rather ironic twist, when the Hadopi agency unveiled its new logo in 2010, it turned out that the font they used was under copyright and owned by France Telecom.  Not a terribly auspicious beginning.

But they soldiered on and Hadopi went live.  What has been the result?  It took them millions of Euros and three years to get one conviction. Valéry Marchive reported on it in this article in ZDnet back in 2012:

For the first time since its difficult birth in 2009, the work of France's anti-piracy authority Hadopi has resulted in a conviction. Earlier this month, a man known as Alain P was convicted of having failed to effectively secure his home internet connection and will have to pay a fine of no less than €150 as a result. 

Calls to repeal the law have been getting louder.  In addition to those who always thought it was a bad idea (I was one of them) many of those who liked it or were ambivalent about it were admitting that it was not efficient and has not worked as intended.  The Rapport Lescure released in May called for the suppression of the Hadopi agency and lightening up some of the penalties.

So does this mean that Hadopi is dead?  No, the article in the  EU Observer is a bit misleading.   What the French government did was issue Décret n° 2013-596 du 8 juillet 2013 which eliminates only one of the penalties for illegal downloading (albeit the worst one):  the possibility to cut the Internet access of people who have been warned but who persist in downloading intellectual property in violation of the law.  The fines are still there and I've heard that Hadopi will be absorbed into another government agency which will take on the responsibility of enforcement.

But most importantly, the intent - the original objective - is still there.  Lescure's mission was called "L'acte II de l'exception culturelle" and his report is revealing.  Hadopi may be on the ropes but there are other methods to achieve its goals that are less punitive and more positive.

What I did like however about Lescure's report was the number of stakeholders consulted and the different views that were expressed.  Some of the proposals are quite good and show the incredible creativity of the French.  I'm not so sure about the tax they propose on connected devices but that might be a good compromise.  I wouldn't rule it out until I see the details.

But do you know what I admire the most?  Yes, millions of Euros were spent and a lot of time and energy expended on everyone's part but, when it became clear that it was not working, they were willing to face that and consider making a course correction.  In a situation like this one the "sunk cost fallacy" can be an important deterrent to doing the next right thing - just because one has spent a million euros doesn't meant it's rational to spend a million more just to try and save something that cannot be saved.

Here's hoping that the French, with their usual deftness and intellectual agility, have steered clear of the trap.

Le Mariage pour Tous (Gay Marriage)

Excellent article up on Arun's blog, Arun with a View, about the recent passage of a law that authorizes marriage between gay and lesbian couples here in France.  It is commonly referred to as Le Mariage pour Tous (Marriage for Everyone).

Like Arun, I was not very comfortable discussing it during the rather bitter political fight that went on as the law was being debated.  Back in February I wrote this post expressing my uneasiness at being asked to take sides.  I am not yet a French citizen and I drew the line at signing any petition that implied I was one which made a few people very unhappy with me.

How I feel about this personally is informed by my upbringing in the U.S.  I knew gay couples in my youth, some of whom had children.  The parents were good people (in one case I know of there were four parents) and the kids were just like any other kids.  Did they make mistakes?  Of course but not any more than any other parent.  During the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's I watched the grief of one partner in a long-term (decades) relationship when his partner got sick and later died.  You can't tell me that these two were not together in all the ways that matter and it seemed so unfair that their relationship did not have legal status.

In France there is the wedding at the mayor's office and, for those who wish it, a wedding at the church or synagogue.  For me the first was perfectly nice but it was a formality we had to go through in order for my spouse and I to be able to be together in France.  The one that counted was the wedding at the church.  The French state could authorize polygamy tomorrow and I wouldn't bat an eye.  There is civil marriage and then there is religious marriage - the first is for legal certainty but the latter is a sacrament.

What's kind of ironic in this entire debate is that marriage (civil or religious) is going out of style here in France.  Very few of the young couples I know are actually married - the PACS (civil partnership) is preferred.  In 2010 the number of births here outside of marriage was a whopping 54%.  It's rather funny that an institution that is being abandoned more and more by straight couples is the object of so much controversy when eligibility is expanded to include gay couples.  It may be that this new inclusive law will be the only thing holding up civil marriage in France in the future - so much for the idea of "Marriage for Everyone."

Arun's post is interesting on several levels.  He points out that the debate over gay marriage in France is not a mirror of the debate in the U.S.  The law in France was opposed by quite a few people on the Left like students and feminists.  The churches here certainly played their part but it wasn't simply the Religious Right against the Progressives.

Once again this shows the danger of looking at any issue solely through the prism of what is going on in one's own country.  The conversation is not the same and there can be as many faux amis (false friends) as there are genuine similarities.

Enjoy the post and your day of rest.

François Hollande - the Voice of Sanity

For diverse reasons, I miss Sarkozy but I like the new French President, François Hollande, more and more.  Yesterday he gave a speech at the Grande Conférence Sociale here in Paris (program here).

It was a good speech:  sober and clear with a call for everyone to "serrer les coudes" (work together) to fix the pressing issues of the day (youth and senior unemployment, the economy, the debt)  in order to save the things that matter like "les régimes sociaux" (social safety net).  No hyperbole or grand rhetoric or attempts to "chercher les coupables" (find the guilty).  It's the kind of speech that one would expect when there are grown-ups running a government.

You can read the full text of the speech here.  Allow me to translate a few paragraphs for the non-Francophones in the audience so you can get a taste of his method and his message:

The state of the nation:  "Je ne veux rien cacher de la situation de notre pays. Nul besoin de forcer le trait, il suffit de prendre la mesure des trois grands défis que nous devons collectivement relever." (I don't want to hide anything about our country's situation.  No need for exaggeration, it's enough to simply look closely at the three large challenges that we must face together).  These are, he says:  the debt, the eroding competitiveness of the French economy, unemployment and social insecurity.

Three conditions to respect in the search for solutions:  1. "D’abord, les Français veulent en comprendre le sens." (First the French people want to understand the reasoning) 2. "C’est la justice." (justice). How, he asks, can we ask the people to rally behind us if the most favored percentage of the population is exempt and only working people are required to make sacrifices? 3.  "Enfin, la condition la plus certaine de la réussite, c’est la confiance. Les sociétés qui connaissent les performances les plus élevées sont celles qui ont su nouer des compromis durables." (Finally, trust/confidence is the most important condition for success.  Those societies that have the highest performance are the ones that know how to put together compromises that last).

A method based on three principles to save the French model:  1.  "Le premier est d’aborder l’ensemble des sujets, sans exclusive (The first is to tackle all the subjects, no exclusions.  Everything goes on the table),  2. Fixer un agenda cohérent et partagé permettant d’avancer en commun, dans le respect de l’indépendance de chacun." (Set a coherent and shared agenda to progress together while respecting everyone's independence), 3. "S’inscrire dans la durée." (commit to the long-term).  The goal, he says, is not to have multiple conferences just to hear everyone talk over and over again on the same topics.

Seven themes:  1. L'emploi (employment), 2. "Le développement des compétences et la formation tout au long de la vie." (skill development and life-long training), 3. "Les rémunérations" (compensation), 4.  L’égalité (equality), 5. "L’avenir de nos retraites." (the future of our retirement system), 6. "L’équilibre de nos comptes et la compétitivité de notre pays." (find the right balance between the budget and the competitiveness of our country), 7. "Assurer la pérennité de nos régimes sociaux." (assure the long-term survival of our social safety net).

Hollande ended his speech with this modest statement:  "Je ne demande à personne, ici, d’abandonner ses convictions, de renoncer à ses revendications, de ne céder à je ne sais quelle pression. Je fais confiance à des acteurs libres et indépendants pour prendre leur part de la tâche commune. Celle qui nous dépasse : l’avenir de notre pays. Toute votre part." (I am not asking anyone here to abandon his convictions, to renounce his interests or to cave under I do know what pressure.  The thing that is more important than all of us is the future of our country.  It is in your hands).

Very promising and, from my standpoint, inspiring in a quiet thoughtful way.  We'll see how things shake out in the year to come.