Polish plumber

The Plumber Polish (in Polish: Polski hydraulik ) is an expression popularized in France with the Printemps 2005 at the time of the debate on the project of constitutional treaty European, by reference to a draft Directive, very unpopular in France, presented by the ex-police chief Frits Bolkestein.

One finds the expression under the feather of Philippe Val, in a file of the number of Charlie Hebdo of December 2004, but it is Philippe de Villiers which caused the important mediatization of the concept. The declaration of Philippe de Villiers was the following one:

“This business is very serious, because the directing Bolkestein allows a Polish plumber or a Architecte Estonia N to propose its services in France, the wages and with the rules of Social protection of their country of origin. On the 11 million active people in the services, a million employment are threatened by this directive. It is about a dismantling of our economic model and social. ”

This expression is taken again on the ironic and provocative mode by Frits Bolkestein in the newspaper Libération in April 2005, calling upon like justification of the draft Directive, the difficulty which it has to find a plumber for installations of his second home with Ramousies in North.

It quickly becomes the symbol of the polemics surrounding the French Référendum on the treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. The partisans of “Not” and “Yes” returned the responsibility for this climbing. First showing the seconds to have invented of all parts a caricature intended to discredit them. Seconds showing the first not to have shown too much of eagerness with décrier an ambiguous metaphor calling at the same time with the fear of economic transformations and the feelings Xenophobe S. The such attack of the Not Godwin in a discussion Usenet, the simple evocation of the " plumber polonais" in a debate on the TECE guaranteed at the time the discussion would remain sterile.

A later business of May 2005 was given by the media as illustration of this expression when it was discovered that a Portuguese company having signed a subcontract with France Telecom employed in France of the Portuguese workmen according to the conditions of their country of origin (legal duration of work and wages) - an illegal practice, including under the mode suggested by the directive services, and denounced by the Factory inspectorate as of January 2005.

The tourist bureau of Poland used this image by adapting it to invite the French to come to visit the country, by a poster where a Mannequin advantageously muscular, Piotr Adamski, plays the part of the Polish plumber and affirms to want to remain in its country, presented in a positive way. Consequence: the French tourist frequentation would have increased by 14% for the summer 2005 (compared to 2004), against a total progression of 4,6% for other nationalities.

Laurent Ruquier invited the model mannequin of the poster of the tourist bureau of Poland on the plate of its emission One very tested , thus consolidating the myth maintaining well established Polish plumber .

The new discussions and the return of the Bolkestein directive, in a modified form ( to see Directive Services ), in February 2006, reactivate the use become recurring of this formula.

The image of the Polish plumber as element of social dumping coming to compete with on the wage level the well remunerated workers remains anchored, to be begun again for comparable situations: the head of French undertaking Vighen Papazian (chairman of Infodis, administrator of the Caviar Petrossian), thus denounces the “unfair” competition of the Indian engineers, whom it finds still more dangerous than that of the Polish plumbers.

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