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a écrit :
Sarkozy can be the French Thatcher

By Simon Heffer
Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 13/02/2007

French presidential elections are usually little more than light entertainment for the British. This one, though, is different.

Since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958 French presidents have been old men, pursuing a policy unchanged since 1945 and aimed to keep united a France that was divided by war and occupation. Charles De Gaulle was 79 when he left office; so was Francois Mitterrand. Jacques Chirac is nearly 75.

The two leading contenders this year, Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, are 53 and 51 respectively. A new generation is poised to take over, and there may be about to be a break with the past.
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France, like its massive and powerful neighbour Germany, has underachieved hugely in recent years. It has high unemployment, and a massive public sector - more than half the French national product is spent by the State, compared with 42 per cent in Britain.

Mr Sarkozy has talked of the need for a “rupture” with that past, and has publicly acknowledged the need to cut taxes.

Ms Royal is less keen for such a break, even though some of her policies - such as boot-camps for France’s increasing number of delinquents - have caused dismay on the traditional French left.

In her 100-point manifesto, unveiled on Feb 11, she promised a higher minimum wage and higher state pensions. It brought immediate, and predictable, cries from her opponents asking where the money to fund these things would come from.

It seems the French people are in a mood for radical change, rather as the British public was in 1979 when it broke the post-war consensus and elected Margaret Thatcher.

The outgoing president, Mr Chirac, has had an uncomfortable few years. The French electorate signalled its dissatisfaction with the traditional political class and its policies in the last elections in 2002, when a big protest vote for the Front National caused its leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to come second in the poll, ahead of the main socialist candidate and former Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin.

The attempts of Mr Mitterrand and Mr Chirac since 1981 to govern France in a way that kept the low-paid majority happy at the expense of the aspirational minority were beginning to grate.

Mr Chirac was, though, slow to take any message from Mr Le Pen’s comparative success. Mr Chirac’s second term as President then became a litany of misery. The immigrant-dominated outer suburbs of Paris went up in smoke two years ago, and there was unrest elsewhere in France.

A new employment contract for young people, to seek to get unemployment percentages down into single figures, led to a wave of strikes.

France had expected to get the 2012 Olympics, and went into a national convulsion of shock when London won the prize instead. Perhaps the biggest humiliation, though, was the defeat for Mr Chirac and the Government in the 2005 referendum on adopting the proposed European constitution.

Commentators in France have drawn comparisons with Mr Le Pen’s success in 2002, taking the event as proof of a mood for change among the French people.

That referendum split the Socialist party in half, with one faction led by the former Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, and the other by the party’s general secretary, Francois Hollande.

Mr Hollande happens to be the common-law husband of Ségolène Royal, who until recently was merely the President of the Regional council of Poitou-Charentes.

With the party divided over Europe, Ms Royal came through the middle to seize the media initiative last year, and to have herself nominated, by an overwhelming majority, as her party’s presidential candidate last November.

But she is deeply unpopular with "les éléphants" - the grandees of the Socialist party - many of whom are already carping at her from the sidelines.

She has perpetrated various gaffes, mainly on foreign policy - she praised China’s barbaric justice system, seemed to equate Israel with the Nazis, and called for independence for Quebec - but has also indicated a preference for an independent Corsica, and raising still further France’s penal levels of taxation.

All this seems to suggest that her trailing Mr Sarkozy in the polls is unlikely to change between now and the first round of voting, on April 22.

There could yet be a surprise, but it would be along the lines of 2002. Although Ms Royal still seems a better candidate than Mr Jospin did, she could still be knocked into third place - either by Mr Le Pen, fighting again in his 79th year, or by the charismatic centrist candidate, Francois Bayrou, who is neck-and-neck in the polls with Mr Le Pen vying for third place.

Some French commentators believe Ms Royal has the capacity to implode, which would make for a fascinating contest.

The most likely outcome - a Mr Sarkozy victory - has tremendous implications for France, for Europe and therefore for Britain.

Mr Sarkozy has the power to become the most exciting and combative political leader Europe has seen for 30 years, since the advent of Mrs Thatcher.

If he wins, though, expect him to press for a new order in Europe - so it won’t just be the French who have a bumpy ride.

a écrit :
Since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958 French presidents have been old men, pursuing a policy unchanged since 1945 and aimed to keep united a France that was divided by war and occupation. Charles De Gaulle was 79 when he left office; so was Francois Mitterrand. Jacques Chirac is nearly 75.

The two leading contenders this year, Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, are 53 and 51 respectively. A new generation is poised to take over, and there may be about to be a break with the past.

a écrit :
France had expected to get the 2012 Olympics, and went into a national convulsion of shock when London won the prize instead

a écrit :
May 7, 2007
Reforms will still need the voters to show their thirst for change
Bronwen Maddox: World Briefing

At last, the front-runner won, after months in which polls had suggested that, at the last moment, he just might not. Now that Nicolas Sarkozy is President of France, will it make much difference?

It could, but more likely abroad than at home, and only if voters demonstrate a sustained appetite for change, which so far they have not.

Yet the sense of drama surrounding the French election was justified; it is just possible that Sarkozy can trigger the changes that France needs in order to restore bewildered surliness in a Europe of 27 countries.

The condition on which any change hangs is next month’s parliamentary elections. If voters return a centre-right government, then Sarkozy has a chance of putting into practice some of the policies on which he campaigned. If they express their ambivalence by picking a centre-left government, then his month-old presidency will lead to years of paralysis.

The reason the election remained so hard to predict, despite Sarkozy’s steady lead in the polls from the start, was voters’ ambivalence about the programme he laid out – and about him. His message that France urgently needed to change resonated with those dismayed to see the faltering of one of Europe’s most powerful economies and the loss of France’s central place in making European policy.

President Chirac’s use of the Iraq war to illustrate, and magnify, France’s differences with the US failed to establish his country as the hub of a rival set of values and diplomatic allegiances. In the turmoil of the Middle East, France, for all its historic links, is playing a peripheral part.

Sarkozy’s offer to bring France back from the margins had great allure – in theory. But voters were unconvinced about the details. Many feared that his labour reforms, designed to bring down the stubbornly high rate of unemployment, would rip up the “safety net” of protections enjoyed by those in work. More broadly, many appeared to fear that he would destroy the qualities that make France distinctly French; Ségolène Royal’s gibe that he was an American with a French passport proved to be one of her most successful lines.

That is why it is easier to see Sarkozy having a rapid effect abroad than at home. It does not take much more to mend relations with Washington – particularly with an Administration in such a chastened state – than to declare a desire to do so, and to get on the plane. Ask Angela Merkel; the German Chancellor managed to insert criticism of wide flanks of US policy into her first encounter with President Bush, so grateful was he that she was not Gerhard Schröder.

In the European Union, the mere fact of having a new French President will release the paralysis over a new constitution (or whatever uncontroversial diminutive it is called). Sarkozy favours, in broad outline, the notion of a pared-down version of the ill-fated original. Given that this is all that Britain and several other countries will accept, it is likely to emerge as the compromise, despite Germany’s desire for something more ambitious. It is possible, then, that with one step, Sarkozy puts himself back in the mainstream of the next big decision in European policy.

But an attempt to retrieve the influence that France enjoyed in a much smaller European club will be credible only if it regains its economic confidence and manages to find a formula, “French” or otherwise, to bring down unemployment. There, inevitably, Sarkozy’s chances are slimmer.

a écrit :L'avenir du modèle social français en question après l'élection de Sarkozy

Par Isabelle CORTES   

PARIS (AFP) -
Sans prétendre attaquer de front le modèle social français, Nicolas Sarkozy semble dans son programme vouloir l'écorner par des mesures ponctuelles sur les heures supplémentaires, le service minimum, les régimes spéciaux de retraite ou un contrôle encore plus serré des chômeurs.
Le président élu, qui a défendu la "rupture" et proposé d'"inventer un nouveau modèle français" au motif que le modèle actuel ne fonctionne plus, affiche la volonté de le réformer sans tarder avec une série de rendez-vous fixés aux partenaires sociaux dès l'été et la rentrée.

"Le peuple français s’est exprimé. Il a choisi de rompre avec les idées, les habitudes et les comportements du passé", a-t-il estimé dimanche soir.

Le successeur de Jacques Chirac compte donc lancer dès les prochaines semaines un vaste plan de réformes d'inspiration libérale susceptibles de modifier profondément les règles du jeu sur l'emploi ou la protection sociale. Ainsi, Nicolas Sarkozy, qui a appelé à "travailler plus pour gagner plus" et a fait le procès des 35 heures sans pour autant prévoir leur abrogation, veut développer les heures supplémentaires dans les entreprises grâce à un bonus de 25%, une défiscalisation et une exonération de cotisations sociales.

Le président élu, qui prévoit de ramener le taux de chômage sous les 5% en cinq ans, compte aussi faire plancher syndicats et patronat dès septembre sur la "flexicurité". Ce concept, inspiré de pays nordiques comme le Danemark, et défendue aussi, sous une forme différente, par Ségolène Royal, offre théoriquement plus de sécurité aux salariés et plus de flexibilité aux entreprises pour embaucher et licencier.

Cette réforme permettrait, selon sa conception, à un salarié licencié de garder son statut et 90% de son salaire durant une année, mais elle modifierait fortement le droit du travail français par la création d'un contrat de travail unique et une durée réduite des procédures de licenciement.

L'économiste Pierre Cahuc, qui prône le contrat de travail unique, a jugé en revanche ce week-end dans Le Monde que sur les heures supplémentaires, M. Sarkozy "veut mettre en oeuvre une mesure qui n'existe, à ma connaissance, dans aucun autre pays, exactement ce qu'il reproche aux 35 heures, et dont les effets sur l'emploi sont imaginaires".

Nicolas Sarkozy, pour qui les Français se diviseraient entre "ceux qui font l’effort de travailler" et ceux qui vivraient "de l’assistanat", veut aussi pousser les chômeurs à reprendre un travail rapidement, en réduisant, voire supprimant, leurs allocations après deux offres d'emploi refusées.

Par ailleurs, il compte réduire les effectifs dans la fonction publique, dont le poids et le rôle constituent un fondement des services publics "à la française".

Il plaide aussi pour un service minimum en cas de conflit dans les transports, mesure perçue comme une remise en cause du droit de grève par plusieurs syndicats. M. Sarkozy propose de négocier sur le sujet, mais entend légiférer dès l'automne en l'absence d'accord avec les partenaires sociaux.

Pour la protection sociale, il souhaite poursuivre la réforme des retraites en allongeant la durée de cotisation et en alignant les régimes spéciaux sur le régime général.

Dans la santé, il prône notamment des franchises pour les médicaments, les examens biologiques, les visites à domicile et l'hospitalisation.

Une pétition de médecins, usagers et experts contre la franchise, qui a recueilli près de 26.000 signatures, craint "une remise en cause du système d'assurance maladie solidaire".

AFP