The Great Vacation Flap

By Spencer Davidson

Mitterrand's travel restrictions provoke a Juror over "liberty"

Isn't liberty really the possibility of staying or leaving without asking permission, of going toward whatever country or people one chooses, far from the cold gaze of the state?

The resounding phrases sounded gloriously libertarian four years ago. But by last week French President Fracc,ois Mitterrand must surely have regretted the words he spoke as an opposition leader in 1979. In an effort to help cure an increasingly ailing economy, his government had laid a heavy official hand on one of the most hallowed of French traditions, the vacation.

Rightists and leftists reacted with rare unanimity. "Freedom has taken a vacation," declared the opposition daily Le Quotidien de Paris. Complained the leftist Liberation: "They have stolen our liberties for a fistful of dollars." In Paris, more than 3,000 people marched to the Finance Ministry, chanting, "Vacations! Liberty!"

It was no ordinary demonstration. The protesters wore business suits and designer dresses; their placards showed pictures of idyllic vacation spots in Scandinavia, Austria and China, with FINISHED scrawled across them. Many of the marchers were travel agents who had come to protest the potential loss of 9,000 jobs and $1.4 billion in vacation billings.

The origins of the confrontation lay in an economic condition that has steadily worsened. Battered by 9.2% inflation, 8.9% unemployment and a trade deficit that reached a record $14 billion in 1982, the government decreed a tough belt-tightening package that included higher prices for tobacco and alcohol, and an obligatory taxpayer loan to the government (amounting to 10% of taxes paid in 1982). That was bad enough, but not nearly as controversial as the new restrictions on foreign travel, designed to reduce the outflow of currency.

Under the new rules, French citizens may take the equivalent of only $427 a year out of the country when they travel for pleasure. The penalty for being caught with more: confiscation of the money plus a maximum fine of five times that amount. Complicating matters, personal credit cards issued in France may no longer be used abroad. Said Jean-Franc,ois Deniau, who was Foreign Trade Minister under former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing: "We are condemned to spend our vacations in the countryside with Grandmother." Particularly ironic was the fact that shortly after his election, Mitterrand fulfilled a campaign promise by adding a fifth week of vacation.

Finance Minister Jacques Delors explained last week that the new currency controls would have a psychological impact, "to make people understand what a difficult situation we are in." Other officials expressed the hope that the restrictions would take citizens' minds off the other austerity measures. Yet the foreign travel controversy aroused only anger. Said a bank employee in Paris: "The government is making us pay for its mistakes." Frenchmen were particularly goaded by the fact that they will have to carry a carnet de change, a kind of financial passport complete with a photograph of the bearer, as they pass across the national frontier. Said the usually pro-Socialist newspaper Le Monde: "France is copying the East bloc countries. On the pretext of saving foreign currency, it is setting up a gigantic control system in order to hinder the freedom to come and go."

The government's rationale is that the 8 million French citizens who traveled abroad last year spent $4.9 billion, or more than a third of the trade deficit. The government hopes to slice that sum in half, although some analysts predict that, given the ability of most Frenchmen to circumvent rules, one-fifth would be more realistic. But the negative effects will be substantial. State-owned Air France, for example, could lose 1 million passengers this year.

Inevitably, as the seriousness of the restrictions sank in last week, humorists set out to outline ways to get around them. One approach, they decided, would be to play up to friends abroad. "Even if you haven't heard from them for years," suggested Liberation, "persuade them to put you up and change your money." Another notion: put on a suit and tie, obtain fake credentials and pass off your holiday as a business trip. Finally, in a gibe at the French bureaucracy that still has to come to terms with what is clearly an administrative nightmare, one commentator proposed that travelers simply smuggle their money out. "Just walk with your head high and the bills stuffed in your pockets. The customs agents won't think to look there." Although Frenchmen can usually be counted upon to find ways around restrictions, the latest curbs were not a joke but a singular admission that the Socialist government's economic program was failing.

--By Spencer Davidson. Reported by William Blaylock and Thomas A. Sancton/Pans

With reporting by William Blaylock, Thomas A. Sancton/Paris This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.