The appointment of Harlem Désir as France's minister for Europe in Wednesday’s reshuffle of junior ministers has provoked consternation and derision in equal measure. Not just because Désir will be President Hollande's third minister for European affairs since he came to power less than two years ago in May 2012. But also because Désir was appointed as a junior minister having effectively just been sacked by the president as first secretary of the ruling Socialist Party (PS), where he was widely perceived to have been a complete failure. “He's useless,” the head of state has been quoted as saying.
The manner of Désir's dismissal, his new job and his replacement as head of the PS by MP Jean-Christophe Cambadélis say a great deal about the state of the ruling party and President Hollande's style of political management. But they also speak volumes about France's and particularly this government’s view of the post of Europe minister, of whom there have now been 12 in the last ten years and 22 over the last 36 years. In the past it has been a portfolio awarded for services rendered; now it is being handed out as a punishment. And this comes at a time when the new government of prime minister Manuel Valls is trying to find a delicate balance with Europe somewhere been dialogue and confrontation over the issue of France's spending deficit and the need for structural reform.
Désir's appointment immediately provoked scorn from the main opposition party, the right-wing UMP. MP and failed candidate to be Mayor of Paris Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet described it as an “insult” to Europe. Speaking on France 2 television she said of Désir: “He failed at the Socialist Party. This is typically French – to get rid of someone we promote them. What message does it send to other Europeans, to French people two months ahead of the European elections?” She added: “It's the position that one gives to someone whom you don't know what to do with any more. It's an insult to Europe.” Her colleague Alain Lamassoure, lead candidate for the UMP list of candidates in the Paris region for May's European elections, sought to make fun of the appointment, saying Europe has become the “job centre for the Socialist Party”.
The decision to move Désir to the the Europe post was greeted with dismay across other parts of the political spectrum, too. The interim president of the centrist UDI party Yves Jégo described it as a “surprising appointment” and a “very bad signal sent by France to our partners in the [European] Union”. Green Euro MP Yannick Jadot meanwhile referred to the fact that another prominent figure sacked by the president – finance minister Pierre Moscovici – was now being lined up by France to be an EU commissioner. “Hollande wants to put an outcast from the government in Brussels and the outcast from the PS in charge of European affairs, it's pathetic,” said Jadot.
There was also disquiet among the ranks of the PS itself. Socialist MP Pascal Terrasse described the appointment as a “reward for incompetence”, though there was also some sympathy for Désir. Socialist senator Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, who is on the left of the party, said she found it “a bit strange that the government of France is organised as part of the internal games of the Socialist Party”. Bur she recognised that Harlem Désir has “the qualities to be a minister”.
Certainly Harlem Désir, who co-founded the anti-racist group SOS Racisme in 1984, knows the EU scene well having been been elected a Euro MP three times. However his record as a member of the European Parliament is far from dazzling, especially in his third and current term, in which he has combined his duties as an MEP with those of being first secretary of the PS. On the eve of this European Parliament’s final session – which starts next week in Strasbourg – Désir currently has the poorest attendance record of any French MEP. Even Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right Front National, and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, have better records.
According to the rankings worked out by the NGO Votewatch, Désir is 752nd out of a total of 766 MEPs, having taken part in just 48% of the votes during full sessions of the Parliament at Strasbourg, though admittedly this is only one measure of an MEP's commitment to their job. In comparison Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the hard-left Front du gauche, who is regularly criticised on the Left for his lack of attendance at the Parliament, does significantly better according to this benchmark, scoring 69%, putting him in 684th place. Clearly Désir's decision to continue as an MEP while being his party's first secretary since 2012 has contributed to his poor attendance record.
Désir, who is a member of the Parliament's international trade committee, a key body that is, among other things, overseeing the EU's attempts to negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States, has also only produced one report since his current term as an MEP began in 2009, and that was in 2010 on “the social responsibility of businesses in international trade agreements”. In comparison his fellow socialist MEP Pervenche Berès has produced eleven reports in the same period.
In Europe itself the reaction to Désir's appointment has been polite but not enthusiastic. The French socialist group at the Parliament paid tribute to the outgoing minister for European affairs, Thierry Repentin, whom it described in a statement as: “A worker who got involved [and] the Socialist MEPs have appreciated the close and continuing relations that he had with us.” It added somewhat coolly: “It is with the wish for the same constancy and close contact that we welcome Harlem Désir to his new post.” Meanwhile the EU commissioner for the internal market Michel Barnier, who was France's agriculture minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy, reacted cautiously. “Désir is a European,” he said. “Now it's up to him to get to work.”
'Getting rid of the halfwits who can't communicate'
The manner of Harlem Désir's removal as head of the Socialist Party and his replacement by Jean-Christophe Cambadélis has also caused widespread surprise, both among the opposition and within the PS itself. There was a time when, as president, Nicolas Sarkozy considered himself to have such an impact on the then-opposition PS that he jokingly referred to himself as that party's “director of human resources”. However, in directly intervening and sacking the party's leading figure in this way François Hollande has taken on this role for real.
In a sense, the decision to remove Désir, known for his leaden press releases and lack of charisma, and seen as a factor in the party's disastrous showing in last month's local elections, was in line with the general philosophy behind the recent reshuffle. This can be summed up as: “We are getting rid of all the halfwits who can't communicate, because everything is simply a matter of communication.” But there are other factors too. By moving Désir to the government, Hollande seems to have hoped to stop him standing as head of the socialist list of candidates for the Paris region in May's European elections. Désir only won 13.58% of the vote when elected in 2009 and the Elyséé seems to have wanted to avoid the risk of him doing even worse in the coming poll.
But managing human resources has never been Hollande's strong point, and the exact consequences of Désir's removal are still uncertain. It is, for example, still possible that Harlem Désir could be a candidate for the Paris region in the European elections. Another possibility is that Vincent Peillon, himself sacked as education minister in the reshuffle, could be parachuted in to replace Désir as head of the PS list for the Paris region. Peillon is currently head of the party's European election list in the south-east of the country, but early opinion polls for him there have been catastrophic.
Yet despite Hollande's machinations, which were doubtless intended to restore his control over the party he once led, this outcome is far from certain. For the man Désir has now nominated as his successor, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, failed in his bid to become first secretary in September 2012 in part at least because he was considered to be “incompatible” with the Hollande way of doing things. At the time the then-prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was vehemently opposed to Cambadélis's candidature on ideological and ”ethical grounds”.
But now this one-time Trotskyist who became a supporter of socialist politician and former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has benefited from both the dearth of talent in the PS and his own determination to obtain a position that no one else wants any more. And despite the fact that he was deemed “incompatible” with Hollande, he might yet serve the president as an efficient strategic organiser of the party. He was president of France's main student union, the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France or UNEF, in the 1970s and 1980s, and in 1994 he organised the series of meetings and debates between groups on the left of French politics known as the 'Assises de la transformation sociale'. This was a prelude to the 'Gauche plurielle' or 'Plural Left' broad coalition of the Left that governed France under prime minister Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2002.
Cambadélis's critics argue that he is no great reformer. Others point to the fact that he has twice been convicted by French courts for receiving money for what were essentially 'fictitious' jobs; the first case, involving his connection with an immigrant workers' accommodation organisation going back to the mid-1990s, led to a five month suspended prison sentence and fine in 2000. The second, involving a student insurance company, resulted in a fine and a six-month suspended jail term in 2006. But it should be noted that Harlem Désir's conviction in 1998 for receiving income from a 'fictitious' job linked to a immigrant education organisation – which earned him a fine and an 18-month suspended prison sentence – did not stop him from being voted in as first secretary by party members.
However, there is considerable confusion over just how Jean-Christophe Cambadélis's position as first secretary will be endorsed by party members. In his leaving statement nominating Cambadélis as his successor, Harlem Désir noted that, after next week's meeting of the party's national committee to approve the choice, the “new first secretary should afterwards face a vote from activists” in the name of the “democratic culture” of the party. However, according to the party's statutes the temporary leadership of the party is only envisaged for a “prolonged absence” of the party's leader. In other words, no one knows for sure what procedures are required in a case where the existing leader has been removed. Will there simply be a straightforward vote to endorse a decision that has already been made? An election with rival candidates? A special party conference? Or will Cambadélis simply be allowed to remain 'temporary' first secretary until the next regular party conference, which is scheduled for the end of 2015? None of this is yet clear.
Jean-Christophe Cambadélis himself said on Thursday April 10th that he wants “the members to be consulted in the choice of PS first secretary”. But already there is anger among some socialists about the way that the president intervened to force the head of the party to quit. The MP from the Charente in south-west France, Jérôme Lambert, had already quit the Socialist Party group in the National Assembly because he felt they were not heeding the voice of the voters. After learning that Harlem Désir was set to be removed as first secretary, Lambert wrote on his Facebook page: “...I am not far away from leaving the party if it transpires that such manoeuvres are really taking place”.
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English version by Michael Streeter