On a stage set that looked as if it came from a game show, Mr. Hollande, a Socialist, responded to questions that were critical of his leadership with combativeness and his trademark wit, discussing everything from a troop withdrawal timetable in Mali to a new effort to construct a 75 percent tax on incomes over a million euros (about $1.3 million) a year. Still, even some on the left found Mr. Hollande less than inspiring in the face of stagnant economic growth, record and rising unemployment and general French unhappiness with the state of the country.
Underscoring the gloom, the government announced Friday that France missed its deficit target for 2012 of 4.5 percent of gross domestic product, hitting 4.8 percent, as total government debt rose to 90.2 percent of G.D.P. from 85.8 percent in 2011.
An editorial in the left-wing newspaper Libération said Friday that Mr. Hollande’s television performance had disappointed “the many who wanted more than a puff — but rather a blast of anger or revolt” over economic hardship and unemployment. The author of the editorial, Éric Decouty, said the president had been “often bland, almost banal.”
And Mr. Hollande was widely mocked for saying that “all the tools are on the table” to fix the economy. Jean-François Copé, the president of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, disparaged the remark as “horrible,” saying: “Is this what the president of the republic is now? Someone who is in a garage to repair a car?” Marine Le Pen, head of the far right National Front, said similarly: “One cannot bring minor responses taken from a little D.I.Y. toolbox.”
François Fillon, the former prime minister, said that Mr. Hollande “is not a president who is combating the crisis but worsening it” through his economic policies.
Mr. Hollande’s ministers and his party defended him, and he remains securely in power, with another four years to his term and an effective majority in Parliament.
But he has already conceded that his vow to cut the budget deficit this year to 3 percent of G.D.P. will not be met, with 3.4 percent likely. He now promises to get to 3 percent by 2014, when he expects growth to pick up. His finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, has said that the government must cut spending and will not raise taxes further.
Thursday night, however, Mr. Hollande promised that military spending would not be cut this year, though it will be in 2014, and that his symbolic effort to tax incomes over one million euros at 75 percent for two years, which was thrown out by the constitutional court, would be adjusted to put the extra burden of tax onto the companies paying such salaries.
Business leaders are highly critical of Mr. Hollande’s policies. They believe he has done too little to reduce corporate taxes and to loosen the tight labor laws that make hiring and firing expensive, and therefore, they say, add to unemployment and the prevalence of temporary contracts.
Bosses and moderate labor unions agreed to a modest deal in December to overhaul the labor market, a pact that was considered a major Hollande success. But business leaders warn that the president is allowing Socialist legislators to attach weakening amendments to legislation intended to incorporate those changes.
“It’s essential to see it honestly translated into the law,” Henri de Castries, the chairman and chief executive of the major French insurance company AXA, said in an interview. “The president gave his word. And if Parliament were to do something else and change the balance, this would be a very, very, very bad signal at a time when it’s the last thing the business community needs, and it would be a bad sign for those on the union side who took the risk. It would destroy confidence further when we need to build compromises.”
As the criticism of Mr. Hollande increases, former President Nicolas Sarkozy has dropped hints of a political comeback. He, however, faces legal questions over accusations that he “exploited the frailty” of France’s richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, to get campaign money in 2007, a charge he sharply denies.
His wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is making her own political waves. “The Penguin,” a song on her new album, “Little French Songs,” appears to mock Mr. Hollande, though she denies that the song is about him. “He takes on his little sovereign air, but I know him, the penguin, he doesn’t have the bearing of a Lord,” she sings.
In another song, “My Raymond,” which she happily says is about Mr. Sarkozy, she compares him, favorably, to dynamite and an atomic bomb. “My Raymond, he’s got everything right, it’s authentic stuff, we can’t say that he hesitates to cross the Rubicon.” She adds: “Whatever fools say about him, Raymond is dynamite.”
Also on Friday, there were more signs of labor unhappiness at the stalling economy. Workers at a small greeting card company in southern France temporarily detained the head of the company and the chief of the Dutch firm that owns it after laid-off employees were told they would not get severance pay. The workers’ action was backed by the Socialist mayor of the town, Cabestany.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/world/europe/hollandes-tv-appearance-is-criticized.html?partner=rss&emc=rss