We could have told you about the affair which focused the attention of the European – and especially British – press on France all week. You know, this “debacle as shameful as foreseeable”, cet “major failure”, this “deep-seated history of police incompetence”, excused in a way “dishonest” by the French authorities, this “national disgrace” that the political parties shamelessly recover…
You don’t see what it’s all about? But if ! What they all talk aboutThe world to the BBC passing through the Corriere della Sera or CNN, it’s the total fiasco of the Champions League final, at the Stade de France, on May 28. The evening, which resulted in particular in more than 200 minor injuries and a hundred arrests, was marred by major security problems: numerous frauds, supporters parked in tunnels, compressed against railings, some climbing the barriers of the stadium, others targeted by tear gas… This huge failure for UEFA and for the French authorities has not finished making people talk about it, and has totally eclipsed Real Madrid’s victory against Liverpool (1-0).
But it’s another subject that we have chosen to highlight this week, which will undoubtedly be of interest to most of you at the start of the long weekend: the right not to open your laptop, to not to read work emails, to unplug – even – so that no instant messaging disturbs these three days of peace. In short: the right to disconnect, enshrined in French law since 2017… And which has since been regularly discussed abroad. Not always for the best.
From 2017, when the law had just been adopted, the Washington Post thus mocked this hexagonal incongruity. A new facet of our legendary reluctance to work! “This email from your boss received at 22 hours ? You have the right to ignore it. That message from a co-worker on a Saturday with just ‘a quick question’? A reply on Monday will suffice. But only if you are in France.” This is how the American daily then summed up this new right to disconnect from which French employees working in large companies had just benefited.
But since then, the tone has changed.
“Long live the difference between work and relaxation”, written today Financial Times, noting that the “right to digital disconnection vis-à-vis his employer” was exported from France to other European countries. It is this article that we invite you to discover. First, because once is not custom, our British comrades speak well of us. But also because the journalist qualifies his statement: working outside office hours is still common in many French companies, both because of the absence of strict rules and because “companies that do not take measures in this area do not incur any sanctions”.
Sure, but “the lead taken by France, which has tried to enshrine these principles in its laws, appears today in a new light because other countries are in turn establishing forms of the right to disconnect”, add the Financial Times. Italy, Spain and Portugal in particular, to name close neighbours. For the economic daily, it’s simple: French law has made it possible to change mentalities. And now, many companies are looking at solutions to help their employees manage nothing less than “the tyranny of technology”.
Very good weekend to you. As for me, I disconnect.
Virginia Lepetit
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2. No to the Americanization of the Quai d’Orsay!
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