French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to divert €30 billion a year from on-the-job training to fund a campaign pledge to battle France's worst jobless rate in years, amid signs of a recovery in his opinion poll ratings.
With April's first-round vote nine weeks away, prime minister Francois Fillon said yesterday that Mr Sarkozy was determined to press ahead with an overhaul of unemployment benefits and training and would use the threat of a referendum to make sure it overcame opposition from unions and employers.
Under French labour law, companies, the state and local authorities provide funds for employees to develop their skills or carry out research, with these funds administered by a large number of organisations and groups.
"We will take these €30 billion and deploy them massively to help the unemployed," Mr Fillon told RTL radio. "That would allow us to say to jobseekers who cannot find anything quickly, we are offering you a qualification."
Mr Sarkozy launched his candidacy this week for a fresh five-year term and pledged to make broader use of referendums, saying this would "give the public its voice back".
An opinion poll by BVA published yesterday - the first since Mr Sarkozy declared his candidacy - showed support for Mr Hollande in the April 22nd first round slipping by 3 points to 31 per cent, while Mr Sarkozy gained one point to 26 per cent.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen was unchanged on 15 per cent from the previous survey in late January.
The poll, conducted on Thursday, suggested Mr Hollande's lead in a May 6th runoff has narrowed to 12 percentage points, with him polling 56 percent to Mr Sarkozy's 44 per cent.
Despite the improvement in his poll figures, BVA found that only 46 percent of respondents were convinced by Mr Sarkozy's 15-minute TV interview to declare his candidacy, while 53 per cent found him unconvincing.
Mr Sarkozy said on Wednesday that the first referendum of his second term could be on his plan to radically overhaul the country's system of unemployment benefits and retraining.
Yet Mr Fillon and other Sarkozy aides say a plebiscite would likely only be a last resort and used mainly as a stick to pressure parliament to pass the measure.
"He does not want to organise a referendum on this issue. He would like social partners to come to agreement on this reform," Mr Fillon said, noting that the threat of a popular vote could be enough to break a political impasse.
"In some cases, it will be enough to brandish this possibility for intermediaries to find a way to reach agreement," he said.
Only on occasions where the constitution needed amending was a referendum indispensable, Mr Fillon said, such as a plan to write a balance budget target into the charter as part of European crisis-fighting measures.
Reuters