World News Story

05 December 2008 10:26 BST

France's new direction

Nicolas Sarkozy has a fight on his hands to push through his agenda for change in France.

The centre-right UMP party's victor of 2007's divisive presidential election has a mandate for reform but, as events are showing, this is no guarantee of success.

The old guard

Jacques Chirac had been France's president for ten years when French voters said 'non' to the EU constitution in 2005.

His failed efforts to convince the 55 per cent of voters who roundly rejected the EU's latest round of institution-building led to many perceiving him as a lame duck.

In October that year three weeks of violence broke out in France's dilapidated suburbs. The banlieues were revolting against high unemployment, police harassment, and racial discrimination against immigrants.

They advertised to the world a France deeply at unease with itself.

This impression was reinforced by last year's controversial first employment contract, which sought to give bosses the ability to fire people under the age of 26 without giving a reason during a two-year trial period.

Students battling riot police found their efforts were not in vain: Mr Chirac, perceived as seriously out of touch with the will of his people, eventually backed down from the unpopular legislation.

Finding a replacement

A strong desire for change emerged in the French presidential election of 2007, but the preceding campaign also revealed serious differences between the country's political leaders.

Mr Sarkozy led the field from the start. His efforts to shed an unpopular hardline image appeared to be working and, combined with a series of gaffes from socialist candidate Segolene Royal, he won a sizeable advantage in the polls.

Ms Royal appeared to spend too long "listening" to the public and only launched her manifesto on February 11th. She promised an agenda entrenching popular left-wing measures with traditional French values – but it was not enough.

After the first round eliminated third-placed Francois Bayrou and others, an impressive 85 per cent of eligible voters turned out. Fifty-three per cent voted for Mr Sarkozy to Ms Royal's 47 per cent.

Sarkozy's agenda

The UMP's plans included altering working hours to effectively end the 35-hour working week, implementing tax cuts and tightening up France's immigrations laws.

Parliamentary elections held in June secured Mr Sarkozy's mandate, as his party won 345 of the 577 seats in the national assembly, but this total fell far short of the 470 seats estimated by some pollsters.

Legislation was prepared over the summer which put through his proposals, as France looked to shake itself out of what many are calling an economic malaise.

Initially the "rupture tranquille" proceeded fairly briskly, with tax cuts the primary focus of his early legislation. They appeared to be softening the way for more controversial labour law changes.

Mr Sarkozy also found time to drop in on US president George Bush as he holidayed in New England, renewing a relationship strained over the Iraq war under his predecessor.

Trying times

Mr Sarkozy's presidency suffered its first major setback in a bad week for his country. As it exited the Rugby World Cup in mid-October, crippling transport strikes began – amid confirmation that he and his wife Cecilia were to separate by "mutual consent".

Strikers ground the country's transport infrastructure to a halt in late November, with national railway networks, bus routes and the Paris metro all adversely affected by the industrial action.

A 24-hour walkout by civil servants added to his woes, but it was the transport action which appeared to be most costly - between €300 million and €400 million (£215 million and £286 million) according to one estimate.

By mid-December there were indications he was beginning to overcome the strikers, however. The third scheduled transport strike did not take place because of growing cracks among the unions, indicating Mr Sarkozy may go into the new year more upbeat than many commentators had feared.

A Kerviel ball

France endured an unusually busy new year period. By far the biggest news story has centred on the antics of Jerome Kerviel, the alleged rogue trader in the Societe Generale case.

But there were also other Gallic stories, like the £47 million of French art stolen from a museum in Zurich on February 10th.

February 18th saw at least 33 people arrested in connection with November's apparently organised riots in a Paris suburb. The raids followed Mr Sarkozy's campaign to raise employment levels among France's ethnic communities by tackling employers' racism.

His political efforts were briefly eclipsed by his love life, however. On February 2nd Mr Sarkozy married Carla Bruni, five months after divorcing his wife Cecilia.

The mayor who performed the ceremony, Francois Lebel, said the bride was "ravishing" and added: "The bridegroom wasn't bad either."

Update – May 2008

Mr Sarkozy's presidency may have seen its nadir in mid-April. This time last year he was in the middle of a successful election campaign to become France's next head of state, but mid-March 2008 saw him receive a slap on the wrists in local elections.

The Union Movement Populaire lost the popular vote and saw it lose control of dozens of cities and towns across France, with commentators suggesting a certain lack of dignity on Mr Sarkozy's part – as well as opposition to his much-hated reforms - may be to blame.

A state visit to Britain, which saw him address the UK parliament and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy wow the UK tabloids with her demure elegance, may have helped him begin the recovery from these setbacks.

And his statesmanlike stance on the Tibet situation on April 5th, threatening a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games over China's treatment of the Himalayan region, is also believed to have helped his domestic standing.