THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT is planning a summit in January to tackle an unprecedented (in the past decade) rise in unemployment.

The EU Observer cites figures released by the labour ministry in France this week which show unemployment has hit a 12-year high and the rate has risen every month for the past seven months. Nicolas Sarkozy is to head up the jobs summit on 18 January – there are now 2.85 million people unemployed in France. Some of the measures to tackle this figure include the possibility of encouraging companies to cut hours and have more people working part-time than a smaller number working full-time.

However, as anyone who has ever travelled to France during a union strike will know, employee unions are very strong there. They and employer unions will both be at the 18 January summit and will have to agree to compromise for any proposed measures to come into practice.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sarkozy is “largely inspired” by measures Germany took two years ago when unemployment and recession kicked in.  However, Germany was already on this road to changed working hours a decade ago. Even so, its unemployment rate rose slightly in November.

According to Eurostat, the unemployment rate in France for the third quarter of the year was 9.9 – up by 0.2 from the second quarter of the year. In Germany, it was 6.0. But in Ireland, as we know, it was 14.4 (up from 14.2 in Q2).

(via Eurostat.ec)

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