After riots, France fails to improve poor suburbs

By Estelle Shirbon

PARIS (Reuters) - The enclaves of poverty on the edges of French cities have fallen further behind the rest of society since a wave of riots in 2005, official data showed on Monday, casting doubt on government pledges to stop the rot.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, elected in 2007, had promised a "Marshall Plan" to improve life in the deprived suburbs after decades of neglect, but a government report showed that the rhetoric had not translated into concrete results.

The troubled neighbourhoods, labelled "sensitive urban zones" or ZUS, are clusters of tower blocks with high proportions of people from an immigrant background, where unemployment, poverty and school drop-out rates are high.

In its latest annual report, the official watchdog that monitors the ZUS found that the gaps in income and jobless rates between the neighbourhoods' 4.5 million inhabitants and the broader society had continued to widen after the 2005 riots.

"We are still stuck in a ghetto," said Claude Dilain, mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, the suburb of Paris where the unrest began after two local youths died while fleeing from police.

"We are back where we were before 2005 ... If nothing is done, we are heading for disaster," he told Le Monde newspaper.

Dilain is one of many critics who say that the government has not been serious in its efforts to provide better housing and schools for the suburbs and reduce unemployment there.

During a visit to three suburbs last week, Sarkozy set aside broader social themes to focus on crime, promising to improve security by installing thousands of security cameras.