Anatomy of (another) retreat by the Hollande government

AnotherAnother mass protest, another withdrawal by the government of a key measure that was backed by most of its supporters. Last year ministers decided to delay implementation of the eco-tax after widespread protests against it in Brittany in the west of the country. On Monday the government announced that it is now to postpone its planned bill on the family for at least a year, in the wake of the 'Manif pour tous' ('Demonstration for all') protest march through Paris on Sunday that attracted around 100,000 people from across the right. They were demonstrating against what they claim is this government’s 'family phobia'.

The decision to postpone the family law bill came after an extraordinary sequence of events as the government sought to digest the impact of Sunday's large march. First of all interior minister Manuel Valls announced on Monday morning that ministers would oppose any attempt by MPs to table amendments adding the most contentious issue to the bill, namely giving single gay women or couples the access to assisted reproduction. This provoked an irritated response from the head of the ruling Socialist Party's MPs at the National Assembly, Bruno Le Roux, a supporter of the measure. Yet a few minutes later prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault's office confirmed that the government would indeed fight any such amendment.

Later in the day the governmental was to go even further. As recently as Friday, the junior minister for families Dominique Bertinotti had confirmed in an interview with Mediapart that the long-awaited family bill would be examined by ministers in April and then presented to the National Assembly in the autumn. But on Monday afternoon the prime minister’s office announced that there would be no family bill at all in 2014. For some observers this delay may doom a measure that was intended to bring the law in line with the reality of modern family life by giving a proper status to step-parents, creating new legal procedures to help facilitate the lives of stepfamilies and easing the process of adoption.

Unsurprisingly, the decision was hailed as a victory by the organisers of the 'Manif pour tous' protests.

Proposals to give single gay women and couples the right to assisted reproduction – known as 'PMA' in French (for 'procréation médicale assistée') – had been one of their many grievances. Yet though PMA did not feature in François Hollande's list of 60 election campaign pledges, he did promise to introduce it, repeating this promise on several occasions. Moreover, the socialist majority in the National Assembly, led by Bruno Le Roux, has been strongly in favour of the measure and originally there were plans to include it in the law allowing same-sex marriage that was passed – in the face of protests – last year. But with opposition already mounting over the issue at the time, Jean-Marc Ayrault persuaded MPs not to add it to the same-sex marriage bill.

In return it was agreed that PMA would feature in the forthcoming family bill (see Ayrault's comment above). However in January 2013, as street protests over same-sex marriage continued, President Hollande himself decided to kick the issue into the political long grass by announcing that the matter would be referred to the national ethics council the Comité consultatif national d’éthique (CCNE) and that the government would abide by its decision. On Monday the CCNE's president Claude Ameisen told Mediapart that the council would not pronounce on the PMA issue for another year.

Many MPs in the ruling Socialist Party fought hard to hide their dismay over the postponement of the family bill and in particular the delay over PMA. “The debate on PMA is not closed,” said the party's national secretary on social issues Marc Coatanéa on Twitter. “This campaign commitment has to be met during this presidency. Let's wait for the opinion of the CCNE.” For his part Bruno Le Roux hopes that once the CCNE has given its view the delayed family bill will ultimately include assisted reproduction for lesbians. “Deferring a bill which does not contain PMA is a good decision,” he Tweeted.

But other MPs were more open in their disappointment. “Of course we shouldn't rush and plough on regardless. But being of the Left means always being first to open up new rights, to fight for progress. We're not really doing that,” said socialist MP Thomas Thévenoud, who is close to the minister for industrial recovery Arnaud Montebourg. The socialist president of the Assembly's cultural affairs committee Patrick Bloche noted: “The PS's position was agreed several years ago, the [parliamentary] PS group voted overwhelmingly for PMA at the end of 2012 and their conviction has not changed. I hope there is a constructive dialogue between the government and its ruling party.”

Bloche said he also regretted the way both the prime minister’s office and Manuel Valls had, in announcing the government’s opposition to amendments, conflated the issues of assisted reproduction and surrogacy. “They are two very different debates, it's inappropriate to link them.” Referring to the current plans to tighten abortion laws in Spain and the fact that assisted reproduction is widely available there, one stunned MP said: “Spanish women will be coming for abortions in France and French women will going to Spain for assisted reproduction.”

An official from the government’s coalition partners the EELV described the government’s decision as “an unacceptable retreat which, far from calming things, can only galvanise reactionary and conservative movements which protest against equality”. A similar tone came from lobby groups who have closely involved in the issue. The feminist group Osez le féminisme attacked what it called a “whole raft of abandonments” while the equality organisation Oui oui oui “congratulated the socialists on their cowardice”.

Manuel Valls the 'deputy prime minister'

In reality, while this chapter of blunders says a great deal about how a section of the Right has become radicalised, it also speaks volumes about the government itself, its public relations, the way it functions and its political line. Ever since the first large-scale protest against same-sex marriage on November 17th 2012, the government has had to deal with the rise of a social movement on the right that it was unprepared for. The right-wing opposition party the UMP, acting out of political calculation, is clearly chiefly responsible for this development. But the government’s hesitation about how to deal with it has also fuelled reaction on the Right.

At the same time, there have been errors in communication. An example was the row last week over the supposed teaching of gender studies in primary schools, when the education secretary Vincent Peillon himself ended up using the expression 'gender theory'. And the minister of women’s rights Najat Vallaud-Belkacem – who is also the government’s official spokesperson – sometimes appears to be on her own when defending her parliamentary bills. Last week, as disparate groups and individuals from the 'Manif pour tous' to Farida Belghoul started attacking the 'ABCD of equality' lessons introduced by these two ministers, several of their government colleagues scarcely knew what was being talked about.

On Friday, for example, the agriculture minister Stéphane Le Foll seemed somewhat vague about the issues. “In debates about society the working classes have perceptions that are difficult to change. We don't really have the words, the language that goes with it. That's not just a recent thing...and then you can't do everything all the time. It's difficult. And if you do too much you get accused of abandoning socio-economic issues,” he concluded.

Another minister, who asked not to be named, said early last week in relation to the government’s clear reluctance over assisted reproduction for lesbians: “Hollande is right, it's not our obligation. As I've always said: a lesbian couple who want a child, they can do it naturally! It's not for the law to control that, it's going too far.” A third minister, meanwhile, revealed their frustration with Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, whom they accused of favouring PR initiatives at the risk of leading the entire government into a trap.

Such talk is reminiscent of the internal debates that rocked the Socialist Party when it was in opposition. In common with most political organisations the PS - or elements within in it - has often considered social matters such as homosexual and heterosexual equality, equality between men and women and racial discrimination as peripheral subjects. “Social issues are the soft sciences of politics,” explains Laurence Rossignol, a party spokeswoman and former PS national secretary on women's rights. “They're not grand subjects such as the economy, the budget or defence...so they are left to those who are interested in them. For years I've heard people say: 'You’re boring us with these things!' And when we were discussing such matters at the national committee lots of men would talk about other things or go out to make a phone call!” In 2008, 14 large federations in the party even sought to have the PS's new declarations of principle amended to remove the term 'feminism'. They only narrowly failed. And they had the support of a certain François Hollande.

The president of the Republic is certainly not against more equality, as shown by the law on equality between men and women currently going through Parliament. However he has no great interest in such subjects apart from the end of life debate. If such matters provoke serious protests or deepen his unpopularity Hollande has little difficulty in putting them to one side, having campaigned on the promise that he would bring calm to the country after five years of Nicolas Sarkozy as president. The evidence of this is in the number of time he has postponed legislation – officially only temporarily – over issues such as giving votes to non-EU foreign residents, controlling police stop-and-searches and now assisted reproduction. “As long as she didn't make waves, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem has been allowed to move forward...She has carte blanche and the support of the Elysée and [the prime minister's office] Matignon,” says a senior figure in the ruling majority.

In truth, no government heavyweight has asserted their authority over these kind of topics. Manuel Valls has built his popularity on law and order, and Montebourg has forged his reputation over the Florange steelworks saga and industry in general, while Vincent Peillon – who could have provided a counterweight to the conservatism of the Elysée Palace on such matters – has struggled to find his place either politically or in terms of media image. The same is true for finance minister Pierre Moscovici. Meanwhile the prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who has given Najat Vallaud-Belkacem free rein and supported her initiatives, has himself struggled to convince in his public appearances.

This has left a space open for Manuel Valls, and not for the first time it was the interior minister who was in the front line on the family law issue, first giving an interview in a Sunday newspaper then appearing on radio on Monday to announce the first part of the government’s climbdown. It is certainly the case that the march on Sunday was a public order issue and thus a core part of his ministerial brief, and the interior minister has been receiving reports from the country's regional prefects about the movements of the extreme right, which is understandably worrying the government. Yet here, clearly, Valls was once again going far beyond his remit as interior minister.

“Our institutions are changing...there is a deputy prime minister. The time for change is now!” says a socialist parliamentarian, mocking the president’s election campaign slogan. The process is the same each time: a government policy becomes mired in controversy, the prime minister’s office struggles to organise a reaction, often underestimating social protests against the policy; a few ministers do the rounds of the TV studios but make little impact because they are largely unknown (for example Dominique Bertinotti); then Valls steps into the breach, heads for the front line and encroaches onto the role of giving the government line, with the agreement of the Elysée. The involvement of the minister of the interior remains symptomatic of the void left by his colleagues and their hesitations over key issues.

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English version by Michael Streeter