Vidéo: "There is no poverty in France"

The topic of the interview was the fact that when walking around in Paris, contrary to the US, you see almost no poor people. Here is a rough translation of an almost full transcript of the interview:

- The journalist: " How did you encourage the poor people to leave the cities and move to the suburbs? "

- Patric Balkany: " What you are calling the poor people, I am sorry to say it to you, are people who earn a little less money. But while they earn less money, they have the same housing as everybody else, only they are paying less for it. And they live a very good live. We have no poverty in France. We don't have what you call the poor people.

Naturally, there are indeed some homeless persons who chose to live at the margins of society. And I would say, we are taking care even of those people: There are reception centers, because in France also, it is cold during winter and there is no question to leave people who are in poverty outside. Thus we give them asylums (…) We give them everything they need. But these people are relatively rare, they decided once and for all that they were outside the society, that they did not want to work or that they had been rejected by society."

At the end of the interview, (...) a voice over comments: "The 10 % unemployed, the million Rmistes and 86.000 homeless people will appreciate this."

read more in French:
http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/medias/20051117.OBS5644.html
http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/medias/20051117.OBS5561.html

and in German.

Or download the video of the interview from the samizdat site.