Chirac'S Record On Promises

French President Jacques Chirac, who could lose his parliamentary majority on Sunday, was elected by a narrow margin in May 1995 following a campaign in which he made a host of promises.

Here is what happened to those promises.

* Unemployment: Chirac promised to put the jobless top of his priorities and to get them back to work. Above all, I will do everything in my power to restore France's social cohesion and renew the Republican pact with the French people. Employment will be my constant concern, Chirac said in his inaugural address on May 17, 1995.

Unemployment stood then at 11.5 percent of the workforce. Now it is at a record 12.8 percent. More than 3.1 million are eligible for unemployment benefit and the total number without work is closer to four million when those on minimum state assistance are counted.

The government says it has halted the rise in unemployment and the economy is now creating more jobs than it is losing, but the working population is growing faster.

A law passed a year ago which grants private-sector firms relief from France's heavy social security charges if they shorten the work week to save jobs has helped slow redundancies.

* Europe: After toying briefly with the idea of another referendum on the single European currency, Chirac promised during his campaign to lead France down the path to European economic and monetary union.

An opinion poll for the weekly Le Nouvel Economiste in April showed two-thirds of voters believed he had held to this pledge, the only major one he was found not to have broken.

* Tax cuts: Chirac promised during his campaign that he would lower taxes quickly if elected. One of his campaign slogans was Too much tax kills taxation.

In his first mini-budget, Prime Minister Alain Juppe raised the standard rate of value-added tax, France's biggest revenue earner, by two points to 20.6 percent.

In October 1995, Chirac decreed two years of austerity, making reducing public deficits the priority of priorities rather than creating jobs or healing social divisions as he had pledged.

Juppe introduced a special new broad tax on income to pay off the accumulated debts of the public welfare system.

In Chirac's first 15 months in office, the tax burden was increased by about 120 billion francs ($20.7 billion) to a record 45.7 percent of gross domestic product.

In September 1996, the government announced a five-year plan to cut income tax by 75 billion francs, with 25 billion in 1997. But an increase in the levy to help fund the welfare system reduced the net tax cut to 18 billion francs. And increases in local authority taxes meant few voters felt better off.

* Public sector: Chirac promised to boost salaries and vowed that health-care spending would not be capped. He raised the national minimum wage by four percent (about two percent after inflation) in July 1995.

Juppe launched reforms in November 1995 to streamline public health care, retirement and family benefits aimed at ending chronic social security deficits, with a new tax to pay off the social security system's accumulated debts.

The Juppe plan imposed strict spending limits on public health, to be set annually by parliament, with collective fines on doctors whose regional health fund overspends.

The proposals included a plan to make civil servants work longer for a full pension. They sparked a crippling wave of public sector unrest across the country and Juppe eventually dropped the plan for later retirement.