Comment: Cutting bank holidays will not save France's finances

Ask many French people why they like to take time off in July, and they will say they want to be fully refreshed for their month-long break in August.

France is regularly described as the most popular holiday destination in the world, and one of the reasons is that its own citizens are experts at downtime.

They regularly scoff at the overworked ‘Anglo-Saxons’ – the Americans and Britons who eat miserable sandwiches at their desk instead of taking leisurely lunches, who answer emails at home, and who equate vacations with paranoia and failure. 

For the French, plenty of rest is an essential part of their refined Gallic civilisation.

Prime Minister François Bayrou is only too aware of this, which is why one of his proposed solutions to the country’s deepening financial problems is to scrap time off.

In a typically melodramatic performance in July, he spoke of the “mortal danger” France was in because of mounting debt. Savings of almost €44billion were needed to avoid disaster. 

To that end, Mr Bayrou suggested scrapping the Easter Monday bank holiday, as well as the May 8 one that celebrates the Allied victory over the Nazis in World War Two. 

For a traditionally Roman Catholic and socially conservative country that revels in historical commemorations, this was nothing less than sacrilegious.

No surprise that Jordan Bardella, leader of the opposition Rassemblement National party, responded by saying: “The elimination of two public holidays, and ones as meaningful as Easter Monday and May 8, is a direct attack on our history, our roots, and French workers. No RN MP will accept this provocative measure.”

What Mr Bardella could also have mentioned is that the French love to ‘bridge’ their revered jours fériés, taking the days off in between, so that a Monday bank holiday is  skilfully combined with a Friday one to create an entire working week off. 

This is aided by the fact bank holidays in France fall on the actual date so are often handily on Tuesdays or Thursdays allowing just one day of holiday to have four consecutive days off.

‘Bridging’ becomes particularly ambitious in the spring and summer months, to the extent that it is often referred to as ‘aqueducting’.

Mr Bayrou said such tactics were so common in May that the month had more gaps than Gruyère – the Alpine cheese that is full of holes.

The truth is that Mr Bayrou is a lame duck prime minister – one who is far more likely to get sacked by President Emmanuel Macron in the coming weeks than to introduce any kind of significant new legislation.

He certainly has next to no chance of interfering in the very relaxed timetable of French life.

Instead, it appears that his silly proposal to scrap statutory days off is a cynical move to try and push through his overall budget. 

Negotiations with the snarling far-right RN – the largest single party in parliament – are now likely to include scrapping the bank holiday plan in return for RN politicians withholding support of a no-confidence motion against Mr Bayrou. 

In the process, the RN can feel they have achieved some kind of major victory.

Now aged 74 and not in the least ambitious, Mr Bayrou is a long-term political bruiser.

Like many who live in the real world, he considers France’s current debt of more than  €3trillion to be obscene, pointing out that it rises by around €5,000 a second.

By threatening to scrap holiday time, the prime minister can express his intense  frustration with a failing France, before stepping down from public life for good.

He will head off to a life of permanent leisure,