Word: mitterrand
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...days later, Mitterrand's government announced a broad series of austerity measures. In addition to hefty cutbacks in government spending, they included a $285 limit on the amount of currency Frenchmen will be allowed to take abroad and a 1% income tax surcharge to help cover the $1.9 billion social security deficit. To many experts, the emphasis on "rigor" was strangely reminiscent of the policies of former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and his Premier, Raymond Barre, an approach that Mitterrand had harshly criticized during the 1981 presidential campaign...
...Mitterrand's decision to reappoint Mauroy came as a surprise to many Frenchmen. It was Mauroy, after all, who had announced only in February that he "would not be the man of the third devaluation of the franc," and who, during the municipal election campaign, had blandly assured voters that in the struggle for economic equilibrium, "the worst is behind us." A gifted and genial politician, Mauroy has had day-to-day control over the Socialist experiment since Mitterrand's election in 1981. Wrongly anticipating a worldwide economic upswing and applying economic theories that had by then been...
...were over before tackling the problem. Meanwhile, the election in West Germany of Christian Democratic Chancellor Helmut Kohl made matters worse. Kohl's reassuring conservatism prompted even more speculators to play the deutsche mark against the failing franc. To the French it was "the deutsche mark problem," and Mitterrand expected Bonn to correct it by simply raising the value of the West German currency. To the West Germans and others it was a "franc problem" caused by France's dismal economic performance. When the finance ministers of the ten European Community nations met in Brussels, the stage...
...world, like Communist-ruled, isolationist Albania. The moderates argued that France must stay in the European Monetary System (E.M.S.), which requires every member to maintain the value of its currency within a narrow range against the others, even at the cost of domestic sacrifice. The "Albanians" urged Mitterrand to bolt the E.M.S. and resort to protectionism...
When Finance Minister Jacques Delors headed for Brussels, his instructions from Mitterrand called for an absolutely final fall-back position of a 5% revaluation of the mark and a 3% devaluation of the franc. Delors, who is normally a firm pro-European, arrived with all guns blazing. Referring to West Germany's reluctance to revalue, he asked, "What am I supposed to do with arrogant and uncomprehending people?" Unless the E.M.S. could be realigned to France's advantage, Delors threatened, France would withdraw, a move that would severely undermine what little European unity exists. Delors held 13 separate...