A political disagreement over the accuracy of the official French unemployment rate grew sharper Friday after the European statistical office Eurostat published figures that contradicted those of the French government, according to dpa. In its Euro-Indicators report, Eurostat said that the French unemployment rate for February stood at 8.8 per cent, significantly higher than figures reported by the French government's statistical office INSEE on Thursday, which put the level at 8.4 per cent. Jack Lang, advisor to Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal, said the Eurostat report was "a slap in the face" for the French government. "For trying to beautify, to fake, to hide, to misrepresent the sad reality, the government - and this is unprecedented - stooped to statistical manipulation," Lang said Friday. "What humiliation! The European Union refuses to validate the figure of 8.4 per cent announced by the government." Opposition politicians, trade unions and some economists have cast doubts on the government's rosy unemployment figures, accusing it of electoral manipulation and suggesting that many jobless people previously counted had been removed from the unemployment rolls. That accusation received fuel earlier this year when INSEE announced that, because of irregularities in the way some data was reported, it would not be publishing its definitive report on the French labour market in March, as had been its custom. Instead, the report, called the Labour Force Survey, would be issued in autumn, well after the presidential and parliamentary elections have taken place. With three weeks to go before the first round of the French presidential election, the accuracy of the unemployment figures may now play an important role in the campaign, since surveys have shown that unemployment is a major issue for French voters.
