Francis Mer could be relaxing in the Caribbean if he wanted. Instead, France's 64-year-old finance minister gets up routinely at 5:30am, exercises for half an hour on his rowing machine and then works a 14-hour day.
He wants more French people to work like him.
A former steel magnate who is rich enough not to work, Mer is a man on a mission to promote the merits of hard graft in a country where employees enjoy some of the shortest working hours in Europe and are keen to resist the pressures of globalization.
Mer is unfazed by the scale of his challenge and has a clear message for the French: The state is not going to be there for you in the way it used to be.
"For the last 20 years, French culture has been marked by the message `Don't tire yourself out. We'll look after you,'" he told students in the city of Lyon.
"As much as it is desirable to know how to relax, and to enjoy this relaxation, if you think of your personal life and your professional life as a long, quiet journey which consists of waiting for life to end, then life will just pass you by," Mer said.
France's public finances are creaking under the pressure of the increasing cost of people who have retired and Mer's work ethic pitch is aimed at selling reforms being pushed through by the centre-right government.
Since coming to power in June last year, the administration has knocked the edge off France's 35-hour week -- the landmark reform of the previous, Socialist-led government -- by allowing workers to clock up more overtime.
Another reform passed this year requires people to work longer to earn their state pension. A further measure cut a national holiday to raise health care funding for the elderly.
Mer wants to further reduce dependency on the state and boost public revenues by reducing France's unemployment rate and getting more people to work -- an approach endorsed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
France has one of the lowest employment rates in Europe, with just over 60 percent of the active population in work compared to 65 percent in Germany and 73 percent in Britain.
A new government measure aims to get more people to work by encouraging the long-term unemployed to accept low-paid jobs.
Under the legislation, about 1 million long-term unemployed will be offered a part-time work placement with a company or state employer for a maximum of 18 months at the statutory net minimum wage of 545 euros (US$676) a month.
The idea is that this could then lead to another job.
Critics say the government is trying to cut France's jobless rate of nearly 10 percent without tackling the mismatch between the skills companies need and those the long-term unemployed have to offer.
"When people have been out of work for a long time, they need training," said Jacques Rastoul, who deals with labour issues at the left-wing CFDT union.
He said there was a risk the scheme would provide businesses with cheap, temporary labour rather than offering the jobless a real route back into long-term employment.
Many people in France worry that the government's reform agenda will threaten the French way of life by opening the way to a more Anglo-American, capitalist society.
Mer's work ethic marks a change in the economic mind-set in France, where selling change can be a tricky business. The pension reform was passed after nationwide strikes and demonstrations that crippled transport services.
Mer is undeterred. In the age of globalization, he says France must change with the rest of the world.
"Rather than be fruitlessly nostalgic for the era of customs barriers, we should get ourselves into a position to square up to this situation successfully," he wrote in the conservative newspaper Le Figaro.
"My belief is that the only way to fight unemployment is to improve our know-how, to create new activities and to free up initiatives.
"[Work] isn't just the main driver of economic growth, but the source of man's self-fulfilment," he said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary