AH, France! Pays de la strike, RTT, paid holidays … and, of course, champion all categories of public holidays in Europe, right? Well, think again. This image of Épinal is contradicted by European data. Not only are we not the kings of legal lazy, but, in addition, we painfully place ourselves in the low average of the continent. Unfortunately, we are among the most indebted, with a high deficit, and we must roll up with the sleeves … François Bayrou attacks the mountains of the holidays with a big gear: but they mainly turn seven to eight French out of ten anxious to preserve the two holidays coveted by Matignon, May 8 and Easter Monday.
With 11 holidays, the French are, in fact, slightly below the European average. Cyprus sits proudly in the lead. How does a small Mediterranean island of 900,000 inhabitants manage to win the European palm with 15 holidays? The Cypriot secret is in three words: tradition, religion and history. The island combines a particularly rich Greek Orthodox heritage (9 religious festivals, including the epiphany, the “green Monday” of the Orthodox Lent and a specific Easter cycle), Greek national festivals (March 25 and October 28) and its own independence celebrations (1is April and 1is october).
This calendar generosity is explained by the particular status of Cyprus, which officially recognizes the holidays of its different national and religious communities. At Christmas, it is a fireworks: Cypriots savor three days dedicated to Christmas (24, 25, 26 December). A lesson in Mediterranean good manners that meets!
France in the average peloton
But Cyprus is not alone on the podium. No less than six countries are ahead of France with 14 holidays: Croatia, Spain, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Malta (another island!). All these territories, from the Mediterranean to the Balkans, understood that one can be productive and know how to stop. Because these six countries have a secret: they work 40 hours a week (against our 35 French hours). They can therefore afford the luxury of 14 holidays.
So here we are in the group of countries at 11 holidays, in the company of Estonia, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, Greece and Luxembourg. A beautiful skewer of countries which, like us, sail in the European average without making waves. Luxembourg even added in 2019 an additional holiday (May 9, Europe Festival) to reach this level.
35 hours, a French exception
In this small club, France is an exception with its specific work data. Our calendar traveling companions display very varied weekly durations, according to the latest Eurostat 2024 data (average effective hours): after the appalling crisis it has gone through, Greece sits at the European summit with 39.8 hours per week (1is Rang EU!), Hungary works 37.4 hours (14e rank), Estonia 36.5 hours (15e rank), Italy 36.1 hours (17e rank), while Sweden and Luxembourg are 35.7 hours (20e et 19e ranks). We, French, with our 35.8 hours weekly, we classify in 18e Position on 27 EU countries, slightly under the European average of 36 hours. We are not the most badly lotis. This palm returns to the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, with only nine public holidays.
It should be understood that the countries that display the lowest active actual hours (Netherlands 32.1 hours, Austria and Denmark 33.9 hours, Germany 34 hours) are in fact countries that have developed part-time, especially female (the case of Austria) or the development of mini-jobs (in Germany). They are not, so much of “lazy” countries: they have revolutionized their economic model by focusing on hourly productivity, automation, technological innovation and quality rather than quantity. Result: they produce so much or more, wealth with less hours worked. It is the opposite of the Eastern countries, which compensate for a lower productivity by more hours!
Another tasty paradox: in this secular republic which made the separation of churches and the State a fundamental principle, 55 % of the holidays remain of religious origin. Six of our eleven unemployed days are still celebrating Christian festivals: Easter, Pentecost, Ascension, Assumption, Toussaint and Noël. A legacy of the Napoleonic concordat of 1802 which continues in our republican calendar.
Religious festivals and civil holidays
This civil-religious distribution places us in the European average, where around 50 to 60 % of public holidays have a religious origin. Catholic bastions (Malta, Poland, Ireland, Austria) are more than 70 % of religious holidays, with in particular many Marian celebrations, such as the Assumption (August 15) and the Immaculate Conception (December 8), as well as national owners deeply anchored in cultural identity. Poland, for example, dedicates several days to the Virgin Mary and the Polish saints, while Ireland honors Saint Patrick and Malta famous Saint Paul.
To discover
The kangaroo of the day
Answer
Spain, Italy and Portugal have a complex mixture between national parties and regional Catholic festivals, where each region can add its own patron saints and local festivities to the national calendar. Conversely, religious festivals fall less than 40 % in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands and in certain ex-communist countries where the calendar remained very secularized, even after the fall of the wall, as in the Czech Republic or Estonia.
Europe presents, moreover, a memorial landscape contrasted with regard to the commemorations of the two world wars. If November 11, 1918 remains widely recognized (holidays in France and Belgium, commemorated in the United Kingdom), the Second World War still divided the continent according to the lines of the old iron curtain. The United Kingdom and the United States commemorate the “Victory in Europe Day” without an unemployed day, Germany transformed on May 8 into a “day of liberation” rather than defeat, and Belgium completely suppressed on May 8 a holiday in 1983 for budgetary reasons, concentrating the whole warlike memory on November 11. Europe remains cut in two on the date: the west commemorates on May 8, the post-Soviet (Russia, Belarus) celebrated on May 9 and certain countries, such as the Netherlands, have chosen their own release date (May 5). Each nation favors its own historical narration rather than shared memory.
