Diplomats strike

last updated 8 January 2015

Paris

Thousands of French diplomats staged a one-day strike this week to protest budget cuts at the Foreign Ministry. Consular and embassy officials complained that their budgets are so small, they are often forced to buy their own office supplies. It wouldn’t be so bad, they said, if austerity reigned everywhere, but it does not. The foreign minister has a lavish travel budget, and the president’s wife took 50 people with her to Rome a few months ago for the beatification of Mother Teresa. “The French approach is that you can solve world problems through diplomacy,” said Yvan Sergeff of the diplomats’ trade union. “If that is so, then give us the resources.” France has the second largest diplomatic network in the world, after the United States.