France's poorest suburbs slip further behind rest of society, report reveals

RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC in Paris

THE ENCLAVES of poverty on the fringes of French cities have fallen further behind the rest of society, a new report reveals.

The findings have provoked criticism of the government’s efforts to improve conditions in rundown banlieues.

Four years after a wave of riots across the predominantly immigrant neighbourhoods, an annual report from the state watchdog that monitors “sensitive urban zones” found that gaps in income and unemployment rates between these districts’ 4.5 million inhabitants and the rest of society have continued to widen in recent years.

The report concluded that about a third of people (33.1 per cent) in the 750 most deprived zones were living below the poverty line last year, an increase from 30.5 per cent in 2006. In the general population, the total is 12 per cent.

While unemployment in these urban neighbourhoods fell from 17.2 per cent in 2003 to 16.9 per cent last year, the reduction was slower than the national improvement and still left the unemployment rate at more than twice the national figure. In some of the poorest areas, the jobless rate actually rose over the same five-year period.

Young people were by far the most likely to be without a job, with one in four of those aged 24 or younger finding themselves unemployed last year, compared to one in eight across the population. The situation for young men in the banlieues was particularly alarming; almost 42 per cent of men aged 15-24 were out of work.

“Employment and poverty are at the heart of the difficulties faced by inhabitants of these neighbourhoods,” said junior minister for urban affairs Fadela Amara, who grew up on a rough estate with her illiterate Algerian parents.

She insisted the report showed that progress was being made, but that more resources and a concentration on a smaller number of the worst-affected areas was needed.

However, the findings have provoked intense criticism of the government’s efforts to revive France’s poorest suburbs after decades of neglect.

Five years ago, then president Jacques Chirac enacted a law aimed at reducing unemployed in the “sensitive urban zones” by onethird, while Nicolas Sarkozy came to power in 2007 promising an ambitious “Marshall Plan” to reduce poverty and discrimination.

“We are still stuck in a ghetto,” said Claude Dilain, mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, the suburb of Paris where the unrest began in 2005 after two local youths died while fleeing from police. “We are back where we were before 2005 . . . If nothing is done, we are heading for disaster.”

The opposition Socialist Party said the report showed that the government had “abandoned” the millions who lived in the country’s poorest areas.

Mr Sarkozy was criticised by some on the left last week for using a visit to three Parisian suburbs to announce plans for thousands of security cameras, which they dismissed as a populist response to complex problems.

The government last year said it would invest €1 billion on education, employment schemes and transport in 100 out of more than 300 areas where riots broke out in 2005.