Word: premiered
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Raymond Barre made the rashest of vows when President Valery Giscard d'Estaing appointed him Premier of France in August 1976. He promised to cure the country's inflation-racked economy in three years. As that deadline approaches, the roly-poly former economics professor has become the target of increasingly heavy fire from trade unions, the leftist opposition and even the largest party in his own coalition, the Gaullists. Last week, at the insistence of Gaullist Leader Jacques Chirac, the French parliament was called into emergency session for the first time since World War II. Although Barre...
...Premier's "new revolution "provokes an outcry...
Barre's steel measures are part of what has been dubbed "the new French revolution." That is the Premier's attempt to reduce the government's traditionally massive interference in the country's economic affairs. Though railways, utilities and many industries have long been nationalized, Barre is insisting that state-owned companies turn a profit. His model: West Germany's free-enterprise-oriented economy. Barre's government has already dismantled an archaic system of price controls that contributed to inflation because it eliminated incentives to lower prices in a competitive market. Now the Premier...
...Third World. While a French worker takes 11.2 hours to produce a ton of steel, the same job is done in Germany in 7.9 hours and in Japan in 5.9 hours. That is partly because French plants have antiquated machinery requiring greater manpower. A more productive steel industry, the Premier argues, "is a matter of survival for France...
Barre's attempts to follow the West German example have provoked an alarming resurgence of anti-German rhetoric. Michel Debre, who served as De Gaulle's Premier from 1959 to 1962, blamed France's economic troubles on the European Community, which is "too easily manipulated by our German competitors−I say competitors, not partners." The Communists have been even more demagogic. "What the Germans couldn't get in 1914 and 1939 they are conquering today," complained Jean Gillet, a member of the Communist-dominated CGT union...