An independent Azerbaijani journalist has been abducted from Georgia, where he had been living, and forcibly taken to Azerbaijan, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

A court in this former Soviet republic was due to hold a hearing later on Wednesday to arrest Afgan Mukhtarli, who is facing charges of smuggling and crossing the border illegally.

 

Mukhtarli, who is also a civil rights activist, had been living in neighboring Georgia for two years. His lawyer, Elchin Sadigov, told The Associated Press the journalist was abducted outside his home Monday evening, beaten up and taken to the land border between Azerbaijan and Georgia. Sadigov claimed that the journalist’s captors planted 10,000 euros ($11,180) on him, which led to the charges.

 

Eldar Sultanov, spokesman for the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office, said the journalist was detained late on Monday “after illegally crossing the Azerbaijani border” with a large sum of money.

 

Mukhtarli left Azerbaijan in 2015, around the time when several Azerbaijani journalists working for foreign or local independent media faced charges of tax evasion.

 

Mukhtarli’s wife, Leila Mustafayeva, told the AP she was waiting for her husband at home Monday evening but he never showed up. Mustafayeva said her husband had been investigating Georgian business ties of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s family.

 

“Naturally, this created resentment in the presidential family,” she said, insisting that her husband’s disappearance is connected to his investigation.

 

Several dozen journalists rallied in the capital, Tbilisi, demanding that Georgian authorities explain how they allowed the reported abduction to happen.

 

Giorgi Gogia, Human Rights Watch director of South Caucasus, in a statement described Mukhtarli’s disappearance as another step in the Azerbaijani government’s “relentless crackdown on critics.”

 
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Days after President Donald Trump’s first overseas trip, the contentious relationship between the news media and the White House was on full display. Embattled White House press secretary Sean Spicer abruptly cut short the first post-trip press briefing after once again lecturing reporters about their treatment of the president. It comes as reports circulate of an impending shakeup among White House communications staff, as VOA’s Bill Gallo report.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has agreed to hand over documents to the Senate intelligence committee in connection with its investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence last year’s U.S. presidential election.

Flynn had previously refused a subpoena from the committee, with his lawyers asserting the request was too broad in what it was seeking. 

The committee filed a more narrow subpoena, and Flynn is now expected to provide some personal documents and those related to two businesses by next week.

The House intelligence committee is conducting its own investigation, and on Tuesday Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, turned down a request to provide information, calling it “poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered.”

The U.S. Justice Department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel in another investigation that also includes whether Trump campaign aides colluded with Russia.

Trump has rejected those allegations and dismissed the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the November election with a desire to help Trump’s chances of beating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Twitter.

Later, at a White House briefing for reporters, spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump “is frustrated … to see stories come out that are patently false, to see narratives that are wrong, to see, quote, unquote, fake news, when you see stories get perpetrated that are absolutely false, that are not based in fact.”

Trump’s Russia comment came as news reports continued to focus on Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a White House adviser, and his reported attempt to establish a back-channel communications link to Russian officials in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration in January.

Some foreign affairs experts said the move, while former President Barack Obama had weeks left in his term, worried them that it could undermine U.S. security, and some opposition Democrats have suggested Kushner’s security clearance should be revoked.  Other experts say exploring the creation of “backchannels” is commonplace, even during presidential transitions.

Spicer deflected several questions about Kushner’s actions, telling one reporter his inquiry “presupposes facts that have not been confirmed.”

The White House also is bracing for the upcoming congressional testimony of former FBI chief James Comey.  Trump fired Comey after allegedly asking him to drop the probe into Flynn and his close ties to the Kremlin.
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A prominent Azeri dissident and journalist who was kidnapped near his home in the capital of Georgia has turned up in custody in Baku, Azerbaijan, less than 24 hours after he disappeared.

Efqan Muxtarli has been charged with illegally crossing the border from Georgia into Azerbaijan and smuggling 10,000 euros in cash, his attorney told VOA Tuesday. Known for years as a fierce critic of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Muxtarli presumably could face other charges in his homeland related to his dissident activities.

Human-rights advocates have called for immediate action to investigate Muxtarli’s apparent abduction, but Georgian government officials have provided no information about the dissident, who is said to suffer from diabetes.

Muxtarli telephoned his wife at about 6 p.m. Monday and said he would be home in 15 minutes, she said. He never appeared, and his cellphone was turned off. His fate was unknown until an attorney in Baku, Elchin Sadigov, said Tuesday he had met with Muxtarli in the Azeri capital.

Lawyer supports dissident’s story

Sadigov told VOA’s Azeri Service Muxtarli gave him a dramatic account of his abduction, which began when unidentified men grabbed him on a street in Tbilisi:

“They used force to put him in the back of a car, tied him up, put him in a sack and beat him,” Sagidov said. The journey continued for some time, but the kidnappers changed cars at least twice.

“The people in the last car spoke Azerbaijani,” the lawyer continued, recounting his conversation with Muxtarli. “When he was taken out of the car, he found himself at the border,” where he was told he faced trespassing and smuggling charges. Sadigov said the smuggled cash had been put in Muxtarli’s pants pocket before he was turned over to Azeri authorities.

The dissident’s wife, Leyla Mustafayeva, told VOA’s Georgian Service her husband clearly had been targeted for his “professional activities.”

She also noted how ironic it was that he was charged with illegally crossing an international border at a time when he had no passport with him. It had been left at his home in Tbilisi.

Human Rights Watch fears torture

A representative in the South Caucasus region for Human Rights Watch, Giorgi Gogia, told VOA that the government of Georgia must not cooperate in the extradition or repatriation of anyone who faces “an imminent risk of ill-treatment and torture in his home country.”

Muxtarli “was seeking safety and had to flee [Azerbaijan] as a result of a government oppression,” Gogia said in a telephone interview with VOA Georgian. He called on Georgian authorities to immediately investigate the dissident’s disappearance and “ensure the safety of other activists who fled Azerbaijan.”

“It is clear that Georgia’s government is under pressure from the Azeri government,” Gogia said, but he added that authorities in Tbilisi were clearly obliged to take action to protect the dissident from harm, if possible.

Muxtarli himself told VOA Azeri a week ago that he was concerned after learning that Georgian intelligence offices had been quietly approaching Azeri expatriates and dissidents and “recommending” that they leave Georgia and return home.

Baku has denounced dissidents abroad

Georgian authorities had no comment on Muxtarli’s recent remarks, on Tuesday’s report from Sadigov in Baku, or on Mustafayeva’s complaints, but they are understood to have said that there was no legal justification for any detention or arrest of Muxtarli. Local police in Tbilisi have told Mustafayeva they are investigating the possibility that he was kidnapped.

This week’s developments follow a report by a pro-government website in Azerbaijan denouncing dissidents based in Tbilisi for carrying out “underground anti-Azerbaijani activities.”

Muxtarli and Mustafayeva have lived in Georgia for three years, since Mustafayeva began graduate studies in journalism at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA), an institution known for training future generations of civil servants and media professionals. They collaborated on a series of investigative reports disclosing alleged corrupt activities in their homeland, which was published by Meydan TV, a Berlin-based group founded by dissident blogger and former political prisoner Emin Mill.

The husband-and-wife team focused their journalistic efforts on the family of Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev, who has ruled his country since 2003 and has steadily consolidated his power, such as in February of this year, when he named his wife the country’s first vice president.

President Aliyev’s father, Heydar Aliyev, had ruled Azerbaijan as a communist when it was a republic of the Soviet Union; he lost power for a time then returned to control after independence arrived when the USSR broke apart in 1991. The younger Aliyev, who had been in charge of the state oil company, ran for and won the presidency after his father stepped down due to ill health in 2003, several months before his death.

Another arrest arouses suspicion

The recent Azerbaijani accusation of “underground” activities by dissidents operating out of Tbilisi cited the arrest on May 25 of a senior official in an opposition party led by one of the Aliyev family’s longtime political foes, Abulfaz Elchibey.

Goze Bayramli, a deputy chairwoman of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan, was detained while returning from a trip to Georgia and accused of smuggling into Azerbaijan $12,000 in U.S. currency that she had not declared to customs inspectors.

Muxtarli shared his fears about future developments with his friends in Tbilisi. “He was worried especially after the arrest of Bayramli and an extradition case involving a Turkish citizen,” said Dave Bloss, a Tbilisi-based investigative journalist who taught Mustafayeva at GIPA.

Muxtarli’s wife said she is deeply concerned about her husband’s health and about what he might face in Baku. “Journalists are killed – or in the best cases, tortured,” Mustafayeva said. “That’s why we fled Baku.” She told VOA she holds the governments of both Azerbaijan and Georgia responsible for her husband’s abduction.

Eka Maghaldadze contributed to this story, first reported by VOA’s Georgian Service.
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Time stands still in a former Soviet military hospital in Budapest that was abandoned when the last Russian troops left Hungary in 1991.

Soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were among those treated here. Now the 70,000 square meter (17 acre) complex lies derelict — its walls crumbling, its floors torn up, its windows broken.

Traces of the Russian presence are everywhere. In one of the apartments where doctors and soldiers lived with their families, a copy of the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda has been left behind.

It dates from Nov. 20, 1988, and the front page details a visit by Mikhail Gorbachev to India — a memento of the final years of communism under the last leader of the Soviet Union.

In one room, health records and empty medicine bottles lie scattered on the floor. A document reveals that a Russian soldier named Sergei G., who was born in 1962 and served as a driver, was brought to the hospital in 1983 with severe burns on his hands and neck.

It is not clear whether his wounds were from the war in Afghanistan, which the Soviet Union invaded in 1979, or what eventually became of him.

First opened in 1904 as a private mental institution, the Art Nouveau hospital was occupied by the Red Army as it advanced against the Nazis in 1945. New buildings, including a huge surgery department, were added later.

Now they are eerily quiet, with only pigeons flying in and out. Water drips from the ceilings of the operating theaters.

With the fall of communism across Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact military alliance, Moscow brought home its troops from around the region.

But Laszlo Hajdu, 69, mayor of the Budapest district where the hospital is located, said that in 1991 the Hungarian government was not willing to pay the Russians compensation for what they had invested in the hospital.

“They packed everything in rail carriages and left the bare walls to us,” Hajdu told Reuters. “We said farewell to them in June 1991 with vodka, according to Russian customs, and they left in tears. … I was there when we took over the buildings.”

That marked the start of a long saga of changing ownership rights and searches, still unresolved, to find new investors.

Locals still remember the days when they lived next to the Soviet military complex.

“Soldiers were treated here, there was a tall white stone wall surrounding the buildings and they peeked over the fence. … We were not allowed into the territory of the hospital,” said Margit Arkos, 63.

“When they left, there was a big sale, nearly everyone living around here bought chairs, sofas,” she said. “It’s incredible that nearly 30 years have passed, and they have still not been able to decide what should happen to this hospital.”
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Attention is growing on Turkey’s relationship with key NATO allies because of an increasingly acrimonious fight over the use of its Incirlik airbase.

Ankara and Berlin remain at loggerheads over German lawmakers being blocked from visiting their soldiers operating at the base.  

“It’s a legitimate right from the German point of view and that is something Ankara is missing,” points out former Turkish ambassador Unal Cevikoz, now president of the Ankara Policy Center, research organization.  “I understand at the meeting in Brussels between Chancellor [Angela] Merkel and President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan [in May] the matter was seriously discussed.”

The blocking of German lawmakers to Incirlik follows Berlin’s refusal to extradite to Turkey suspects in July’s coup attempt.  Bilateral tensions soared this month with Germany granting asylum to more than 200 Turkish diplomats and military personal wanted by Turkish authorities.  The two sides are in talks to resolve the impasse.  

“I have seen some hints that Turkey will be looking at this issue favorably,” predicts former Turkish ambassador Cevikoz.

‘Blackmail’ won’t work

Germany has deployed reconnaissance planes to Incirlik as part of international efforts against Islamic State.  The vast base, located close to the Syrian and Iraqi borders, is widely seen as crucial in the war against the jihadists.  But this month German Foreign Minister Sigma Gabriel warned Berlin is prepared to relocate its forces.  Jordan is widely touted as an alternative.

“It’s not if, but when, and that ‘when’ will happen quite soon,” warns former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who served widely across the region and is now an analyst.

“It’s up to them, we will not beg them (to stay),” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, claiming Berlin’s threat to withdraw is “blackmail.”

Key logistics hub

Repercussions from the German-Turkish dispute could add to growing unease in Washington.  U.S. forces are the primary foreign users of Incirlik in its war against the Islamic State, as well as using it as a key logistics hub.  

But Ankara has tried to use that dependency as leverage in its dispute with Washington over its military support of the Syrian Kurdish militia the YPG in fighting Islamic State.  Ankara calls the YPG terrorists, claiming they are affiliated with the PKK, which is fighting the Turkish state.

“There is high anti-Americanism in Turkey,” observes Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Institute in Europe.  “There has been talk of restricting use of Incirlik, other than Incirlik there are few areas that Ankara could really undermine the U.S. position.”

“The refusal of Turkey’s suggestion to avoid using the PKK/PYD/YPG in the Raqqa operation is unacceptable hypocrisy,” thundered Devlet Bahceli, leader of the National Action Party, in parliament Tuesday.  Bahceli is a key backer of Erdogan, who has an eye on his 2019 presidential re-election bid.

A balancing act

Ankara’s use of Incirlik as leverage on its allies, in particular Washington, analysts claim is a balancing act, extracting maximum concessions, but avoiding a withdrawal.  

“I don’t think Turkish policy makers want to go there really, (to U.S. withdrawal),” claims analyst Ulgen.  But the dispute with Berlin over Incirlik’s use, could add impetus in Washington to reassess its own dependency.

“The [U.S.] movements of planes from Incirlik are now reduced to earlier periods. This sends a strong signal to Ankara, that Incirlik is not indispensable,” warns former diplomat Aydin. “But lets not forget there are some quarters in Ankara, whether among officials or politicians, who will rejoice if that day comes and the U.S. decides to move out of Incirlik all together.”  

Not just a military airbase

The cost to Ankara of its allies abandoning Incirlik could be immediate and considerable.  “Incirlik is not just a military airbase used by our allies, its also important for intelligence purposes,” points out research organization head Cevikoz. “The intelligence German and U.S. experts secure are also shared with Turkey and this intelligence is absolutely necessary for Turkey’s fighting against the PKK terrorism.”

Turkish policy makers comfort themselves in knowing that finding an alternative to Incirlik has proved illusive to the United States.  Analysts point out no one base can match Incirlik, but a combination of airbases belonging to the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government, along with small airstrips in Syria controlled by the YPG, could offer an alternative.

Such a step could have far reaching consequences.

“It will underline the fact Turkey is not a strategic partner anymore for the other members of the coalition,” warns analyst Aydin.  “But looking at the map, the geographical size of Turkey and its location, Turkey will still remain indispensable in the fight against ISIS.”
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The president of Cyprus on Tuesday rebuked a United Nations envoy for speaking of a possible crisis over the ethnically divided country’s search for offshore oil and gas, calling the remark “unacceptable” and a “threat” amid faltering reunification talks.

The envoy, Espen Barth Eide, was quoted in the Greek newspaper To Vima as expressing concern about the issue. In similar remarks earlier this month, Eide said an “international crisis” could lead to a collapse of the ongoing talks aiming at reunifying Cyprus as a federation.

“I regret that I’m being harsh about it, but I’ve made complaints directly that I consider such remarks unacceptable, especially if they’re made in the form of a threat,” President Nicos Anastasiades told reporters.

It’s the second time this month that Anastasiades, a Greek Cypriot, has leveled strong criticism at Eide, accusing him of bias.

Turkey and the Cypriot government are sharply divided over the energy search.

Cyprus was split in 1974 when Turkey invaded in the wake of a coup mounted by supporters of union with Greece.

Turkey, which doesn’t recognize Cyprus as a state, opposes what it calls a unilateral Greek Cypriot project which flouts the rights of breakaway Turkish Cypriots. In March, the Turkish Foreign Ministry warned that it would “take all necessary measures to protect its interests” in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as those of the Turkish Cypriots. Turkey is also said to claim part of gas exploration areas, or blocks, off Cyprus’ western and southern coast.

French energy company Total is scheduled to drill an exploratory well off Cyprus’ southern coast in mid-July.

Peace talks are at a standstill after Eide called off mediation efforts last week when Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci failed to find common ground on holding a final summit in Geneva, Switzerland. Anastasiades insists on prioritizing at the summit an agreement on withdrawing more than 35,000 troops that Turkey has kept in the island’s breakaway north since 1974. Akinci maintains that all issues should be discussed in a give-and-take process.

Anastasiades said Tuesday there would be no point to a Geneva summit if Turkey isn’t ready to discuss the security issue.
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A French judicial source says a former Guantanamo Bay inmate is among six people from an alleged jihadi recruiting network linked to the Islamic State group who have been detained.

The official said Tuesday that the suspects arrested in Bordeaux included Sabir Mahfouz Lahmar, who was freed from the U.S. detention center in Cuba in 2009 after France agreed to accept him.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case.

Lahmar was one of six Algerians detained in Bosnia in 2001 on suspicion of plotting to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. The Justice Department later backed off the allegations, but held the men at Guantanamo for years.

The French official said Lamar, at age 48, is the oldest of the group of four men and two women arrested.
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The catastrophic IT failure at British Airways that ruined travel plans for 75,000 people has raised questions about some older airlines’ focus on costs to the detriment of investment in new computer systems.

As British Airways resumed full service Tuesday, shares in its parent company, International Airlines Group, dropped 3 percent as investors appeared to worry that the company’s quality of service may have been undermined by recent efforts to save money.

 

Disaster struck on Saturday, when the company’s computer systems went down and there was no functioning back-up. The airline cancelled all flights and only managed to resume full service on Tuesday.

 

“Although cost cutting has been good for the share price in the last year, it will come back to bite IAG if it stops them from doing what they are supposed to do: Fly passengers to their destinations,” said Kathleen Brooks, the research director at City Index.

 

IAG has been battling tough competition, even as it has faced pressure on its earnings from a weaker pound following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. The company issued a profit warning following the Brexit vote nearly a year ago.

 

Cost pressures aggravated an already complicated situation. Renewing IT systems is complex, time-consuming and expensive — a factor that prompts many companies to put it off as long as possible, said Loizos Heracleous, a professor of strategy at Warwick Business School.

 

The problem with IT systems is recurring across the industry, particularly among established airlines. In August, Delta Air lines cancelled hundreds of flights when a power outage likewise knocked out its computer systems worldwide.

 

Airlines face challenges with their IT systems also due to linkages across their systems. There’s further demand on the system when companies consolidate — as has been the case among airlines — since “IT issues get heightened and any vulnerabilities are exposed.”

 

Such troubles give an advantage to newer airlines such as Ryanair, a cost-cutting BA rival that focuses on short haul budget flights.

 

“The ability to set up an airline from scratch by-passes a lot of the legacy issues, because you can go for state-of-the-art systems,” Heracleous said. “Newer airlines can also invest in IT systems that are more easily upgradeable and scaleable. An airline such as Ryanair, that is also financially successful, has more leeway to divert needed resources towards upgrading its IT systems.”

 

Capitalizing on BA’s troubles, Ryanair said it had seen “strong bookings” over the weekend. Its Twitter account rubbed salt into the wound with tweets that poked fun and added the hashtag “ShouldHaveFlownRyanair.”

 

The company’s chief marketing officer, Kenny Jacobs, admitted on the BBC “we had a bit of fun on social media.”

 

“We don’t take social media seriously but we do take IT very seriously and that is why we’ve never had an outage,” he told the BBC.

 

Ryanair posted a 6 percent increase in annual profits Tuesday to 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) despite “difficult trading conditions,” caused by terror attacks in European cities and a sharp decline in the British pound.

 

BA, meanwhile, is counting up the cost of an IT debacle that some have estimated could run into the tens of millions. There are also all those news clips of passengers swearing they will never fly the airline again.

 

“The whole sorry episode has undeniably put a dent in BA’s reputation for delivering a premium service,” said George Salmon, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

 

 
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France, troubled for years by high unemployment, is now grappling with a lack of qualified workers. While it still has 3.5 million registered jobseekers, a growing number of positions lie unfilled because companies can’t find the right people.

Many company bosses are pinning their hopes on newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron, and specifically his labor reform plans, to help find willing and able workers.

One such employer is Philippe Girard, who heads the French subsidiary of British construction equipment maker JCB. Despite offering above market pay rates for entry level jobs, his firm has been unable to fill 50 posts for maintenance technicians in its dealership network for more than a year.

“It’s becoming a brake on our development because clients increasingly want maintenance service on construction sites and without technicians we can’t meet their needs,” he told Reuters.

Girard has also been looking in vain for six months for three sales executives at the JCB France headquarters in Sarcelles, a satellite town of Paris where unemployment is in double digits.

Critics of the current regulatory regime say rigid labor rules and poorly adapted training unnecessarily keep the unemployment rate close to 10 percent.

Macron hopes to fix the mismatch of supply and demand for workers by pouring billions of euros into training while simplifying the labor code.

The object is to make it easier for employers to hire but also to shed staff, should their business turn down in the future. To sweeten the pill, he also wants to expand unemployment benefits for people seeking a career change.

Similar but less ambitious measures to free up the labor market have in the past run into resistance in parliament, and provoked sometimes violent protests on the streets.

Undaunted, Macron has made the reforms his top priority, starting talks with trade unions last week. He is also seeking a majority for his party in legislative elections next month to strengthen his hand in pushing them through parliament.

Skills gap

Companies’ demand for workers is surging as the economy slowly picks up. Government employment agencies had received 274,000 unfilled job offers as of April, up 14 percent in a year and close to levels not seen since November 2011.

Demand for workers on longer-term contracts — which French firms often avoid, fearing they will be unable to get rid of staff in the future — is growing faster than for short-term hires. More than half of the offers received were for contracts of over six months.

Recruitment group Manpower found in a recent survey that nearly one in four French employers was struggling to find workers.

“We clearly have a skills gap between what our customers are looking for and people’s real skills,” Manpower France head Alain Roumilhac told Reuters.

With even relatively lowly-paid industrial workers usually needing to use digital technology, Manpower is investing millions and receives public subsidies to train workers up to meet employers’ expectations.

Eric Labaye, a senior partner at the McKinsey consultancy, said that while 90 percent of jobs require at least basic proficiency with digital technologies, 40 percent of the workforce did not have such elementary skills.

“Adapting the labor market and skills is clearly a priority. The primary focus should be on getting more people with the right skillset into growing sectors. Second is the development of these growing sectors themselves,” Labaye told Reuters.

One example is booming demand for data specialists. France employs fewer of them as a proportion of its workforce than any other OECD country except Turkey, despite a world-class reputation for higher mathematics, according to figures from the 35-nation organization.

Big money

Macron has said he wants to invest 15 billion euros ($16.8 billion) in building up skills for a million youths and another million low-qualified, long-term unemployed people.

France already spends nearly 32 billion euros a year on professional training, equivalent to 1.5 percent of economic output, but only 15 percent goes to training job seekers, according to data from the Labor Ministry.

“France puts a lot of money into the training system but it is very, very complex,” said OECD economist Nicola Brandt, who is preparing a report on France for the organization.

“More money is always better, but we have an issue of money not being used in the right way, basically not going to the people who need it most,” she said.

Extra money for training, as well as extending unemployment benefits to cover people who want to leave jobs for a new profession, could help make Macron’s reforms more palatable to critics.

Eager to push ahead on labor reform quickly, Macron launched talks with unions last week knowing he will have to overcome resistance to his plans to ease regulation.

Though it would help if he wins a parliamentary majority, labor reform is always a deeply sensitive issue in France, where high job security is cherished.

His Socialist predecessor, Francois Hollande, tried to introduce more working time flexibility and rein in labor tribunal challenges and payouts last year, leading to violent student protests in French cities.

Eventually Hollande’s government – in which Macron served as economy minister — invoked special powers to impose the reforms by decree due to a lack of support in parliament.

“Only one mistake could break everything. Macron is trying to be as clever as possible, especially with the unions because even if he has a majority in parliament he has a very narrow path to deploy the program,” Manpower’s Roumilhac says.
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