HE HAD promised to revive the nation’s taste for honest toil, but Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, faced disappointing evidence last week of his countrymen’s disinclination to spend more time in the workplace.

A year after Sarkozy came to power with a pledge to “rehabilitate” work, the French continue to be the world laureates of leisure, according to a survey by Harris Interactive, an American market research company.

Next month the country takes advantage of no fewer than five bank holidays. The Harris survey notes that the French enjoy an average of 37 days of paid holiday a year, compared with 27 in Germany, 26 in Britain and only 14 in America.

No wonder Jacques Barrot, the former labour minister, called his country “a society of pétanqueurs [boules players]”.

This image of a nation of men idling in village squares was one that Sarkozy, with his slogan “work more to earn more”, has made it his mission to change.

His next task will be a law to wean people off benefits by paying nothing to those who turn down two or more job offers. It will be the first time the unemployed have faced such penalties in France and will be fiercely resisted by trade unions.

Although the government appears to have won a battle to reform a pension system that allows people to retire at 55, other initiatives to get the French back to work seem to be foundering. One survey last week showed there was little interest in doing longer hours despite a new rule exempting overtime from income tax.

Sarkozy, known as a workaholic, has fulminated against the 35-hour working week, introduced by a former Socialist government.

He is due to face a television interrogation on Thursday to explain the need for reforms and more productivity. But the message seems likely to fall on deaf ears as France gets ready for a restful May and the long summer holidays that follow.

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