WHEN Christine Lagarde, France’s first female finance minister, returned to Paris in 2005 after a six-year stint at an American law firm, she was bewildered by the change that had come over her countrymen. Nobody seemed that keen on working.

“They were more interested in chatting about their holidays, about their long weekends,” said Lagarde, a willowy figure of 51 in an elegant suit. “Doing nothing was very much the mantra and work was disregarded.”

Since then Lagarde, former head of Baker & McKenzie, the world’s largest law firm, has set an example: her diligence has helped to turn her into the most powerful woman in France, the key general in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign to get the country working again.

A former French synchronised swimming champion, she has been at his side in the assault on the 35-hour week and recently told the French to “roll up your sleeves” and work more.

In an interview last week in her office overlooking the Seine, she said that the worst thing about the 35-hour week was that “it has changed people’s psyche in relation to work”. She wants to restore the French love of labour: “We’re saying, ‘You know what? It’s not bad to work harder because you can get more money’.”

In French terms it is revolutionary. But recent legislation allowing those who want to work more than 35 hours the freedom to do so without paying taxes is only “a first step”, said Lagarde: “The president wants to go further. I am delighted.”

Whether or not they end up doing away with the 35-hour week altogether – those who want to work only 35 hours are still free to do so – remains to be seen. “Clearly it is at the back of the president’s mind,” she said, “and should be at the top of the agenda. I’m not sure how we’re going to address that but we’re going to address it.”

Lagarde had come to the attention of “Sarko”, as the energetic “hyper-president” is known, when she was a minister of trade in the previous government of President Jacques Chirac.

She was appointed agriculture minister in Sarkozy’s first government before being promoted to finance in June. The admiration that Sarkozy feels for Lagarde, who towers over the pint-sized president, is mutual.

“I don’t want to let him down,” she said, “because I think he has been extremely courageous and brave to deliver on his promise to have half men and half women in his government.”

She was working in her office in Chicago when she received a call from Dominque de Villepin, Chirac’s prime minister, at 7am one day two years ago. She was “flattered” to be offered the trade portfolio and boarded a plane for Paris the same day.

Halfway across the Atlantic, she got cold feet. She was giving up a salary of £400,000 a year. She was not exactly sure why.

“I thought to myself, you’re completely nuts,” she recalled. “You don’t know the people you’re going to join. You’re giving up a fantastic working environment. A place where you’re the boss . . . to join a team in which you’ll be one single, little individual.”

When she got to Paris she was amazed to find a welcoming committee waiting for her.

“There was the head of the local jurisdiction in his uniform, the head of the local police in his uniform. And my newly appointed bodyguards. And I thought, what is this?”

She had joined the pampered ranks of the French governing elite.

“It’s extremely comfortable when you are located at the top, so to speak, because things are organised for you,” she said. “I was used to making telephone calls myself, you know, doing things on the go. The civil servants could not believe that I was dialling the numbers.”

She had to change some habits. The French secret service believed her beloved BlackBerry to be a security risk because the hand-held device uses American and British internet servers, meaning her e-mails could be intercepted by foreign powers.

She believes that Sarkozy’s impressive election majority and communication skills could save him from the antireform street protests that have been the scourge of many a French government in recent years.

“When in negotiations you have people saying, ‘No you can’t do that . . . you can’t touch my accrued rights’, sorry, it was announced, the French population had a chance to say yes or no,” said Lagarde. “It said yes.”

Already the government had managed to slaughter various holy cows, said Lagarde, adding that “the measures we voted in this summer are amazing . . . they will have a big impact”.

They included a guaranteed minimum service in public transport in the event of strikes, more autonomy for the universities and the abolition of most inheritance tax. Personal tax was capped at 50% and a generous tax credit for new home-buyers was introduced.

Efforts, meanwhile, have begun to streamline the bloated French bureaucracy and Sarkozy has promised to scrap half of the most senior posts in the civil service as part of the sweeping reform. Two agencies in Lagarde’s ministry which assess and collect taxes will be merged, as will the two agencies to help the unemployed.

A law to modernise the economy will be presented to parliament in March and is expected to include further reductions in taxes as well as provisions for Sunday shopping. Changes to the pension system, perhaps the most difficult of all the reforms envisaged by Sarkozy, are also expected to be presented to parliament for approval next year, including a possible increase in the official retirement age from 60 to 62.

“The French public wants to go through this process (of reforms),” said Lagarde, pointing to Sarkozy’s approval rating of more than 70%, which makes him the most popular French president since General Charles de Gaulle.

The indefatigable Sarkozy sets an arduous pace for his ministers and Lagarde shares his interest in fitness, even if she no longer practices synchronised swimming, a sport she had enjoyed in her youth as a member of the French team. “Legs up in the pool is not the expected behaviour of the minister of economy and finance,” she joked. However, she tries to do a few lengths in the pool at least once a week.

Although she lacks political experience, it does not seem to matter under Sarkozy: a former finance minister himself, the president is a whirling dervish of initiatives and very much in the driving seat when it comes to making policy. He took the unprecedented step of accompanying Lagarde to a European Union finance ministers’ meeting in Brussels in July.

Lagarde, a mother of two grown-up children, is quite happy to let him take the lead. “I’m blossoming in the shade,” she said. “So that’s fine.”

End of easy street

2000 A Socialist government adopts 35-hour week to improve quality of life and cut unemployment by sharing out jobs. The measure fails

2004 Maximum number of overtime hours per year extended from 180 to 220

2007 President Nicolas Sarkozy makes time worked above 35 hours tax-free

See facts and figures on France's economy and society at www.insee.fr/en/home/home_page.asp

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