The politics of Europe’s summer holidays

AT LAST, August is upon us. The summer fruit is plump and the sea is warm. You can almost hear the warbling melody of “La Mer”, Charles Trenet’s ode to the seaside. In summer Europe’s natural order is inverted. The urban become rural. Big cities disgorge their citizens and suck in foreign tourists. Northern Europe comes south, easing the pain of austerity.

A good tourist season in Spain may herald recovery; in Greece it could raise hope that creditors will eventually alleviate its debt. Eurocrats have decamped from Brussels with high hopes this year of not being recalled by another summer crisis in the euro zone. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is taking almost three weeks off, some of it in the Italian Alps. Not so François Hollande, the French president. He will rest for just a week, alternating with his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault. Other ministers will get a fortnight but must stay close by, able to return to their desks at short notice. The cabinet is grumbling, but Mr Hollande is firm: “At a time of crisis, taking two weeks off is not a given.”

Indeed, many Europeans are having austere breaks, booking fewer days away or seeking cheaper lodgings. But Europe’s paid holidays remain just that, holy. It is as true of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic countries as it is of Latin ones. Which raises a question: in the fourth year of their debt crisis, are Europeans working too little? That is certainly the accusation levelled by American peers and Chinese rivals.

In “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that growing wealth would bring ever more leisure. Within a century, work would become so rare that “we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter—to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible”. The vision of a three-hour day was a reverie. But Keynes was right about the broad trend: working-time has been progressively shortened, from about 3,000 hours a year at the end of the 19th century to between 1,500 and 2,000 today. Comparisons between countries are not wholly reliable. But Europeans have generally embraced leisure more enthusiastically than Americans have. The OECD reckons Americans now work on average 1,790 hours a year, compared with 1,480 in France and 1,400 in Germany, which helps explain why Americans are richer. But hours do not explain it all: contrary to the stereotype of lazy southerners, Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians work longer hours than Germans do, and Greeks put in 2,030 hours a year.

Europeans say their choice to take more leisure rather than income is part of a social model that is fairer, healthier and happier than America’s. They think America is the anomaly: the only country in the rich world without statutory paid holidays. Three-quarters of American workers get paid leave of, on average, just 21 days a year including public holidays, compared with anything between 20 and 40 or more days in Europe. But it is harder to defend the notion of enlightened leisure when taxes are being raised, salaries cut and civil servants sacked. Why should vacations be immune from austerity? Workers might rather lose holidays than their income or their jobs.

The spirit of Stakhanov

In wartime, factory workers were exhorted to produce more. So, confronted with the worst economic crisis since the second world war, perhaps Europeans should agree to an extra week of work. Maybe Labour Day (on May 1st in Europe) should be a day of labour. Too Stalinist? Charlemagne tested the notion with experts. Most economists agreed that, broadly, more work should boost GDP though by how much is uncertain. With so many jobless, do companies need any extra labour? Would lost holidays result in extra costs for firms, or reduce workers’ hourly wages? And who would buy the extra goods? Hoteliers and restaurant-owners would lose income. And longer hours may reduce productivity; in the first world war munitions factories increased production by reducing extreme working hours (then up to 100 hours a week). That said, these days Americans work longer than Europeans and still produce more per hour.

Certainly nobody argues that the answer to the crisis is to take even more holidays. Britain’s Office of National Statistics reports that extra days off, such as last year’s Diamond Jubilee, caused a drop in GDP. In Switzerland, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a referendum last year rejected a proposal to increase paid holidays from four weeks to six. Mrs Merkel recently rehashed the idea of making workers retire early to make way for the young unemployed. On the contrary, workers should be postponing retirement to pay for their pensions. And working more years is not that different to working longer years.

Yet merely tinkering with public holidays meets fierce resistance. When Italy tried to shift some mid-week feasts, the faithful in Naples said the miracle of San Gennaro, the patron saint whose dried blood is said to liquefy on September 19th (and at least two other set days), could not be shifted by bureaucratic fiat. Bernadette Ségol, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, argues that France’s competitiveness was not visibly boosted by the abolition in 2008 of a public holiday on the Monday after Pentecost. In any case, hard-won gains could not be given up for economic expediency. Not even bosses seem keen on the idea of making employees work harder. Business Europe, the employers’ federation, says it had not discussed a reduction in paid leave. The federation’s president, Emma Marcegaglia, was not available to talk. She was on holiday. Charlemagne must thus concede defeat. Tired and dejected, he will hang up his pen. He will reluctantly take a three-week rest, consoled only by the Beatles: “Here comes the sun. And I say, it’s all right …” http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21582537-politics-europes-summer-holidays-vamos-la-playa?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/vamosalaplaya

Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne