Tag Archives: France

France

The French right prepares to choose Sarkozy’s successor (maybe)

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France’s center-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP, Union for a popular movement) will vote on Sunday, November 18 to choose its next general secretary in what’s widely seen as a fight to get the upper hand on the UMP’s presidential nomination in 2017. 

The UMP will choose between two key figures — former prime minister François Fillon (pictured above, top) and Jean-François Copé (pictured above, bottom), who has been general secretary since 2010.  As the contest approaches, both candidates have accused the other of fraud, marking an ugly end to what has been a dogfight within the French right.

Unlike most French prime ministers, Fillon actually remained in Matignon — the residence of the French prime minister — for all five years of the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.  Throughout the Sarkozy presidency, he maintained or even gained approval from French voters as a competent and moderate head of government who seemed at times more grounded and focused on Sarkozy’s reforms than even Sarkozy.  Indeed, there’s reason to believe that if Fillon had contested the presidential election against the Parti socialiste‘s François Hollande, he might have won.

Fillon, age 58, both urbane and technocratic, seems to hold a clear lead over Copé, age 48 — a recent Harris poll shows Fillon with a 67% to 22% lead among UMP voters, and a wide edge among French voters generally.

Copé, mayor of Meaux, a non-practicing Jew whose mother is Algerian, previously served as budget minister under prime minister Dominique du Villepin and president from 2005 to 2007, and he’s seen as belonging to the more strident right wing of the UMP.  In some ways, that makes him more like Sarkozy, who was no stranger to pulling hard to the right on issues like immigration or crime in order to win votes.  Copé is, in fact, styling himself as the same sort of hyperactive, gritty leader as Sarkozy.  During the campaign for the UMP leadership, Copé has spoken out against ‘anti-white’ racism in France, a naked bid for voters sympathetic to the hard right, and he mocked Muslims for taking away children’s pain au chocolat during Ramadan.

As such, Sunday’s vote is a bit of a proxy contest for the UMP’s direction in the years ahead — Fillon represents the moderate center-right and Copé represents a more full-throated hard-right approach.  But the next French election is over four years away — in April 2017.  In contrast, consider: five years before 2008, no one in the United States had even heard of Barack Obama.

After all, there’s nothing stopping Sarkozy himself for running for a second term in 2017 — many French voters still prefer Sarkozy to either Fillon or Copé for the time being, and Sarkozy has indicated he may be interested.

The winner of Sunday’s contest will have a delicate task in balancing an appeal to the broad center of French voters, while not allowing other political movements steal support on the UMP’s right.  Marine Le Pen, who won nearly 18% of the first-round vote of the presidential election in April 2012 will almost certainly try to make a bid to expand her appeal beyond the narrow confines of the far-right Front national and become the strongest candidate of the French right in 2017. Continue reading The French right prepares to choose Sarkozy’s successor (maybe) →

France

Final thoughts on French parliamentary runoff results

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As noted in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s parliament elections, the French left looked likely to take a narrow absolute majority of seats in the Assemblée nationale.

As it turns out, the Parti socialiste of François Hollande did even better — it and its allies took 314 seats, not including the 17 seats that its electoral partner, France’s Green Party (Europe Écologie – Les Verts) won: significantly higher than the projection of between 270 and 300 and nearly equivalent to the parliamentary wave after Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election.  In this sense, Hollande’s party actually outperformed Hollande in the presidential race.

But the left’s victory was expected — the pattern of French voters handing a solid presidential majority in June parliamentary elections (following the May presidential runoff) therefore continues.

It will mark the first time that the French left have won control of the government since the 1997 legislative elections; the left lost power in 2002, following Jospin’s surprise third-place finish in the presidential election of that year.

With the final results now counted, here’s a look at each party and its road ahead:

Continue reading Final thoughts on French parliamentary runoff results →

France

French election results show Hollande’s Socialists with narrow majority; Marine Le Pen, Bayrou and Royal lose contests

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It appears that the Parti socialiste of newly elected French president François Hollande has won an absolute majority in today’s parliamentary elections — they will control 290 seats, a slim majority, in the Assemblée nationale.  This will give Hollande, and his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, a clear path to implement their pro-growth program of higher taxes and fewer budget cuts for France, following in the longtime French trend of voters handing a parliamentary majority in June to the party whose president they have elected in May (as happened in 1995 and 2002 for Jacques Chirac and in 2007 for Nicolas Sarkozy). 

Front national leader Marine Le Pen appears to have lost her race in Pas-de-Calais 11 by the slimmest of margins to the Parti socialiste candidate, Phillippe Kemel. Meanwhile Marion Maréchal Le Pen — the granddaughter of former Front national leader Jean-Marie Le Pen — appears to have won her seat in Vaucluse 3, giving the Front national its first parliamentary seat since 1998.

Centrist Mouvement démocrate leader and former presidential candidate François Bayrou has lost his race in the seat he had held in Pyrénées-Atlantiques 2 — often with the full support of the center-right — since 1986.  His MoDem colleague, Jean Lasalle, however, appears to have held on to his own seat in Pyrénées-Atlantiques 4.

And in the most keenly watched race of the day, Olivier Falorni has won a crushing 62% to 37% victory over Ségolène Royal, the former partner of the president, the mother of his children and the Parti socialiste‘s 2007 presidential candidate.  Falorni is a local renegade Socialist, and a tweet of support from Hollande’s current partner Valérie Trierweiler in support of Falorni (in opposition to the entire high guard of the Parti socialiste) erupted into a firestorm earlier this week that threatened to overshadow the second round altogether.  Hollande will have to find a new role for Royal, who had been touted as the next president of the Assemblée nationale.

Former foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, who resigned for in artful comments and other missteps during the anti-Ben Ali revolution in Tunisia in early 2011, has been narrowly defeated by Parti socialiste candidate Sylviane Alaux in Pyrénées-Atlantiques 6.  In Nord 21, Jean-Louis Borloo, the leader of the Radical Party and a center-right ally, will hold on.

Full results and commentary will follow later.

Egypt, France, Greece

Big weekend for France, Greece and Egypt

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It’s another big weekend for elections!

Voters in Egypt go to the polls today and tomorrow to choose a president in the final runoff between the Muslim brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, a former Air Force commander and the final prime minister of former president Hosni Mubarak, in what is seen as a Hobson’s choice between Islamism and the military. Since the Supreme Constitutional Court disbanded the parliament, and Egypt hasn’t even written a new constitution, though, we have no idea whether the new president has real power or will be a figurehead!

Read Suffragio’s coverage of the Egyptian election here.

Voters in France go to the polls for the second time in two weeks for the second round of parliamentary elections, which are expected to confirm a governing majority for newly elected Parti socialiste president François Hollande.  One open question is whether Hollande’s party (and their allies) will win the 289 seats necessary to govern without forming a coalition with the greens and/or communists.  Controversial individual contests also see Hollande’s former partner Ségolène Royal, far-right Front national leader Marine Le Pen and centrist François Bayrou fighting hard for seats in France’s national assembly.

Read Suffragio’s coverage of the French elections here.

Finally, voters return to the polls in Greece after no party emerged in May elections with enough support to form a governing coalition.  Far-left SYRIZA, led by the brash, youthful Alexis Tsipras, is expected to vie with center-right New Democracy for the lead in what will still likely be a fragmented result.  Most of the Hellenic parliament’s seats are awarded on the basis of proportional representation for all parties that receive over 3% of the vote, while the top party receives a ‘bonus’ of 50 seats.  The leading party seems likely to form a governing coalition.

Read Suffragio’s coverage of the Greek elections here.

France

Tweet sets off ‘battle Royal’ between first lady and Hollande’s former partner

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At first, everyone thought her Twitter account must have been hacked.

But no: here was the new first lady of France, Valérie Trierweiler, the companion of President François Hollande, tweeting her apparent opposition to Hollande’s previous partner and mother of Hollande’s four children, Ségolène Royal, who was also the Parti socialiste‘s 2007 presidential candidate.  Royal is fighting for her political life in a tough second-round runoff where she faces an unexpectedly tough fight from renegade leftist Olivier Falorni.

While the entire Parti socialiste high guard from Hollande himself to party president Martine Aubry to prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault have all called for Falorni to step down in favor of Royal, Trierweiler tweeted this yesterday:

Courage à Olivier Falorni qui n’a pas démérité, qui se bat aux côtés des rochelais depuis tant d’ années dans un engagement désintéressé. [Good luck to Olivier Falorni who is a worthy candidate. For years he has been fighting with selfless commitment for the people of La Rochelle.]

Needless to say, when there’s just a week between the two rounds of a parliamentary election, this has been an unwelcome headline for Hollande, crowding out other political news both yesterday and today.

In the first round in Charente-Maritime 17, Royal won just 32.03% to Falorni’s 28.91% — Sally Chadjaa, the UMP candidate, won just 19.47%, but did not qualify for this Sunday’s runoff.  The result caught the national media off guard and was one of the biggest surprises in Sunday’s mostly unsurprising first round.  Royal, who was running in the constituency for the first time, had been promised the presidency of the Assemblée nationale by Hollande, after graciously campaigning for Hollande at a large rally in Rennes earlier in the spring (shown together above).

Although a poll today, conducted before and during The Tweet, showed that Falorni leads Royal 58% to 42%, mostly on the strength of UMP votes, Ayrault has again called on Falorni to step aside.  It is customary, when two or more leftist candidates advance to the second round, for the second-place candidate to step aside for the first-round winner.  Falorni, who has been a longtime ally to Hollande and who actually lives in the constituency, has refused.

The tweet highlights at least four immediate problems for Hollande and the Parti socialiste, who hope to emerge from Sunday’s elections with an outright majority of at least 289 seats in the Assemblée nationale: Continue reading Tweet sets off ‘battle Royal’ between first lady and Hollande’s former partner →

France

Final French parliamentary election results for first round

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France has now had a full day since learning the results of Sunday’s first round of the French parliamentary elections (France votes again in the second round this coming Sunday), and there’s really not much surprise in the aggregate result.

Much as predicted: the Parti socialiste of newly inaugurated François Hollande narrowly led the first round with 29% to just 27% for the somewhat demoralized and rudderless Union pour un mouvement populaire.

It seems likely that Hollande and his allies will control a parliamentary majority following Sunday’s second round (although it’s not certain) — the Parti socialiste is projected to win 270 to 300 seats to just 210 to 240 seats for the UMP.  In the best case scenario, the Parti socialiste and its allies would like to win 289 seats outright this Sunday.  If they wins less than 289 seats, however, they will be able to rely first on France’s Green Party, Europe Écologie – Les Verts, with which the Parti socialiste has an electoral alliance (projected to win 8 to 14 seats, largely because of the alliance) and then, if necessary, with the support of the Front de gauche (projected to win 14 to 20 seats), a group of communists and other radical leftists under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.  Hollande would prefer to avoid the latter, as many potential Front de guache deputies are members of France’s communist party who would attempt to pull Hollande’s agenda further leftward. Continue reading Final French parliamentary election results for first round →

France

Le Pen and Mélenchon battle in Hénin-Beaumont precinct highlights four-way French campaign

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The most interesting contest in Sunday’s first round of the French parliamentary election may well be the most irrelevant to determining whether President François Hollande’s center-left or the center-right will control the Assemblée nationale — but it also showcases that the far-left and far-right are both playing the strongest role in over a decade in any French legislative election.

The race is the 11th precinct of the Hénin-Beaumont region, where Front national leader Marine Le Pen is running against Front de gauche leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.  Le Pen originally targeted the region in 2007 (where she won 24.5% of the vote) — it’s an economically stagnant area where coal mining was once the major economic activity.  Think of it as the part of Wallonia that’s actually part of France.*

Like many of the old French Parti communiste strongholds, it is today receptive to the economic populist message of the Front national — in the first round of the presidential election, Le Pen won 35% there, followed by Hollande with 27% and Nicolas Sarkozy with just 16%.

So it’s a constituency that Le Pen continues to view as fertile ground, a great pickup opportunity in what seems to be the Front national‘s best shot at seats in the Assemblée nationale since 1997.

Mélenchon, however, decided to parachute into the precinct to run against Le Pen (although neither have true roots in the region), prolonging the bitter antagonism that marked the presidential race.  In the spring, their enmity seemed greater than even that between Hollande and Sarkozy.

Mélenchon’s eagerness to attack the Front national led to a surge of support in the first round.  Although Mélenchon won less than some polls indicated he could have, his 11% total was still the best presidential result for the far left in two decades.

For a time, it looked as if Mélenchon’s move was a masterstroke — he would secure a seat for the Front de gauche and in so doing, polls showed, would become the left’s champion in defeating Le Pen.  As predicted, the campaign for Hénin-Beaumont has become a battle royale between the far left and the hard right, with rhetoric matching that of the presidential campaign:

“I find it funny the passion he has developed for me and that he follows me all across France,” Ms Le Pen remarked to a group of journalists at her constituency headquarters in the recession-hit town of Hénin-Beaumont. “But it is good. He divides people. There are people who would not vote for me if he wasn’t here.”

Speaking earlier as he greeted shoppers in a street market in neighbouring  Noyelles-Godault, Mr Mélenchon brushed aside the innuendo that he has some kind of obsession with his rival.

“I do not find her erotic, as I have read in certain newspapers,” he protested. He had become a candidate in Hénin-Beaumont to “shine a light on the vampires” of the National Front, he said. It would be “absolutely shaming” for the left if Ms Le Pen were elected in a former mining area “at the heart of the history of the French workers’ movement”.

And so on.

But as the campaign concludes, polls show an uptick for Parti socialiste candidate Philippe Kemel, who had previously polled far behind the two national stars — even the retiring PS deputy had abstained from endorsing Kemel.

Two polls on Wednesday showed a tight race, however: Continue reading Le Pen and Mélenchon battle in Hénin-Beaumont precinct highlights four-way French campaign →

France

Warning signs for Hollande in French parliamentary campaign

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The campaign for French parliamentary elections kicked off just last Monday, for what most observers believe is a formality in installing the newly inaugurated President François Hollande’s Parti socialiste as the majority of the Assemblée nationale.

French voters go to the polls this Sunday for the first of two rounds — in each parliamentary district, if no candidate wins over 50% (with at least 25% support of all registered voters in the district), each candidate that commands at least 12.5% support of all registered voters (or the top two candidates, alternatively) in the first round will advance to the second round on May 17.

In 2002, parliamentary and presidential elections were fixed so that the former follows nearly a month after the latter.  As in 2002 and 2007, it is expected that the winner of the presidential race in May will thereupon see his party win the parliamentary elections in June.

The rationale is to avoid cohabitation — the divided government that sees one party control the presidency and another party control the government, which has occurred only three times in the history of the Fifth Republic (most recently from 1997 to 2002, when Parti socialiste prime minister Lionel Jospin led the government under center-right President Jacques Chirac).  More than in most countries, the French electorate seem a bit more allergic to divided government, which should give Hollande some relief in advance of Sunday’s vote.

But there are complications this time around, which may result in a somewhat murkier result.

Wait a minute, you might say: Deposed president Nicolas Sarkozy is off licking his wounds in Morocco, leaving a decapitated center-right split between followers of outgoing prime minister François Fillon and Jean-François Copé, head of the Union pour un mouvement populaire (which, unlike the Parti socialiste, is not a decades-long party, but only the latest brand of a series of shifting vehicles of France’s center-right) — Fillon and Copé last week were already sniping at one another.

A surging Front national on the far right (and increasingly and uncomfortably encroached on the center-right and parts of the populist left as well), under Marine Le Pen, garnered nearly one out of every five votes in the first round of the presidential election and is hoping to do just as well in the legislative election.

Meanwhile, Hollande’s prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, seen as a prudent and moderate choice to lead France’s new government, has a 65% approval rating (higher than Hollande’s own 61% approval!), and Ayrault is already moving to reverse part of Sarkozy’s signature reform — raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 — by allowing a small subset of longtime workers to retire at 60.

How, under these conditions, could the PS possibly lose? Continue reading Warning signs for Hollande in French parliamentary campaign →

France

Hollande fills out his cabinet: Moscovici, Fabius, Valls and Taubira take top jobs

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After announcing Jean-Marc Ayrault as his prime minister yesterday, newly inaugurated president François Hollande announced the rest of his cabinet today.

Laurent Fabius’s appointment as foreign minister was expected, even though he campaigned against the European Union constitution in 2005.  Fabius (above, center) is a grandee of the Parti socialiste, having served as prime minister from 1984 to 1986 during the Mitterand administration, and later as finance minister from 2000 to 2002 under former prime minister Lionel Jospin.

Martine Aubry, a leftist firebrand who had been seen as a contender for prime minister and the runner-up to Hollande in the presidential nomination race, will not take part at all in the cabinet, which is mildly surprising.  She had been allegedly offered and rejected a “super ministry” role from Hollande.

Nor will Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s one-time partner of four decades and former presidential candidate, which is not surprising, as it is rumored that she will be appointed president of the Assemblée nationale if the Parti socialiste wins June parliamentary elections.

The biggest surprise, perhaps, is the appointment of Pierre Moscovici as finance minister.  Hollande’s campaign manager and former minister for European Affairs from 1997 to 2002, Moscovici (above, top) was close to former IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  His European experience will guide him well, as the ongoing eurozone sovereign debt crisis stands to be the French economy’s largest immediate challenge for Hollande’s government.

Michel Sapin, another chief economic adviser to Hollande, had been tipped for finance minister, but will instead serve as labor minister.  The fiscally conservative Sapin served as finance minister from 1992 to 1993 during the Mitterand administration and as the minister of Civil Servants and Sate Reforms from 2000 to 2002.

As expected, Manuel Valls, an up-and-coming MP, who served as the Hollande campaign’s communications chief and who comes from the more pro-market wing of the PS, was named interior minister.  Nicolas Sarkozy used the interior ministry as a stepping stone in the mid 2000s to launch his successful 2007 campaign.

Former 2002 presidential candidate and the South America-born Christiane Taubira (above, bottom), who is currently an MP for French Guiana, will serve as minister of justice as the highest-ranking woman in a cabinet that will achieve gender parity.  Taubira is not a member of the PS, but rather the founder of the French Guiana-based Walwari party and a bit of a “free electron” in French politics.

Nicole Bricq, a member of France’s Senate and another ally of Strauss-Kahn, will serve as minister of the environment.

Le Monde has a full infographic of the new cabinet here and full bios here.

France

Who is Jean-Marc Ayrault?

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On a day that François Hollande was inaugurated and held his first meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel, his appointment of a new prime minister in Jean-Marc Ayrault may be the third-most important news of day in French politics.

Nonetheless, Ayrault’s appointment to lead Hollande’s government is the first clear sign we have of how Hollande might govern over the next five years, long after the bloom of his (short) inaugural honeymoon is over and with many, many more meetings between the two leaders of the Franco-German axis that has traditionally moulded the European Union’s direction.  It’s not quite a surprise, given that Hollande seemed to hint at the appointment last week when he said his prime minister “must know the Socialist Party well, its left-wing members of parliament and be on the best of terms with me.”

Ayrault, also the mayor of Nantes, has served as the president of the Parti socialiste parliamentary group in the Assemblée national since 1997, when Hollande was chairman of the Parti socialiste. The two worked hand-in-hand during the ‘cohabitation‘ government of prime minister Lionel Jospin, who served simultaneously with President Jacques Chirac from 1997 until the 2002 election when Jospin, in a shock result, was edged into third place by the Front national‘s Jean-Marie Le Pen.

As Le Monde put it:

Ce sont deux sociaux démocrates, deux adeptes du compromis, deux européens convaincus qui se sont donnés pour mission d’apaiser la France et de la redresser. (“The pair are both Social Democrats, both supporters of compromise, both Europeans who believe their task will be to soothe France and also to reform it.”)

Known as a quiet pragmatist, a “normal” prime minister for a “normal” president (in a presidency that may come to be more reminiscent of Pompidou rather than Mitterand), Ayrault is notably moderate, notably uncharismatic and notably Germanophile — he is a former German teacher.

So what does Ayrault’s appointment indicate about Hollande’s thinking?  Continue reading Who is Jean-Marc Ayrault? →

France

Hollande inaugurated, names Ayrault as prime minister, flies to Berlin

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Newly inaugurated president François Hollande’s flight was struck by lightning en route to Berlin earlier today to meet with German chancellor Angela Merkel — hopefully, not an omen of things to come.

Omen or not, Hollande cannot expect to have any honeymoon after a subdued inauguration.

Hollande also named longtime ally Jean-Marc Ayrault as his prime minister. Ayrault, the president of the Parti socialiste parliamentary group in the Assemblée nationale since 1997, had been considered among the frontrunners for the position.

In his brief address, Hollande emphasized many of the same themes of his campaign: that budget discipline must not come at the expense of potential GDP growth:

“Power will be exercised at the summit of the state with dignity and simplicity,” Hollande declared in an inaugural address to Socialist leaders, trade unionists, military officers, churchmen and officials.

“Europe needs plans. It needs solidarity. It needs growth,” he said, renewing his vow to turn the page on austerity and invest for the future, and implicitly underlining his differences with Merkel.

“To our partners I will propose a new pact that links a necessary reduction in public debt with indispensable economic stimulus,” he said.

“And I will tell them of our continent’s need in such an unstable world to protect not only its values but its interests.”

 

 

France

From Aubry to Ayrault: who will Hollande choose as France’s next prime minister?

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With François Hollande’s election on Sunday as the next president of France, the next big decision point will be the president-elect’s appointment of a candidate for prime minister.

The designee will take a primary role in the upcoming June 10 and June 17 parliamentary elections and if, as is traditional, the winning presidential candidate’s party wins those elections with a majority in the Assemblée nationale, Hollande’s designee will become the head of government.

Outgoing president Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right Gaullist Union pour un mouvement populaire, together with affiliated groups, together hold 345 seats in the current legislature, to just 227 for the left, including just 186 seats for Hollande’s Parti socialiste.  While it is typical in France for the winning presidential candidate’s party to win the election, which comes less than a month after Hollande’s decisive victory in the presidential election, Marine Le Pen’s Front national — which won almost 19% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election — will be running very hard to win seats as well, especially given the aimless state of the now-decapitated UMP, which will be somewhat driftless without Sarkozy’s leadership.

Under France’s two-round parliamentary election system, a candidate wins over 50% of the vote in the first round (and at least 25% support of all registered voters in a precinct), he or she is elected.  If not, each candidate with over 12.5% support of all registered voters (or, alternatively, the top two vote-winners if no two candidates have received 12.5%) advances to the second round, where the candidate with the most votes is elected to parliament.

As such, Hollande’s choice will be the first important signal that he provides to France, to Germany, to the rest of Europe and to the debt market as to the direction he hopes to take the French government over the next five years.

With 2002 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal — Hollande’s former partner and the mother of his children — tipped to become the president of the Assemblée nationale if the PS wins the June election, and with one-time presidential frontrunner and former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn battling legal accusations on both sides of the Atlantic, two main candidates have emerged in the media since Hollande’s election — Martine Aubry, Hollande’s rival for the PS presidential nomination and first secretary of the PS, and Jean-Marc Ayrault, president of the PS parliamentary group in the Assemblée nationale.  In addition, former prime minister Laurent Fabius, Hollande campaign manager Pierre Moscovici, former Civil Service minister Michel Sapin and campaign communications chief Manuel Valls have also been mentioned as potential prime ministers.

So who are these potential prime ministers, how would they be received and how likely are their appointments? Continue reading From Aubry to Ayrault: who will Hollande choose as France’s next prime minister? →

France

Monsieur President: Hollande era begins in France

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France24 this morning has a concise biography — complete with photos — of the man of the hour, France’s newly elected president François Hollande:

[Hollande’s] political rise to the country’s top post has been slow and steady, with the French media portraying him as “Monsieur Normal” – an easygoing, everyday man. Contrast that with the glamour-struck Nicolas Sarkozy, who earned the nickname “hyper-president” during his five years in office.

If Hollande’s victory has a fabled quality, it surely mirrors Aesop’s “The Hare and The Tortoise”, with the steady, shelled creature finally outpacing the hyperactive hare.

International audiences are probably more familiar with his former partner, Ségolène Royal, who unsuccessfully ran against Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential poll. For those who knew him during the 2012 campaign trail – and that includes his comrades on the left – Hollande was the butt of snide, if good-natured, monikers, including “Flanby” (a wobbly custard) and “capitaine du pedalo,’ or the captain of a pedal boat.

But in the course of his bid for presidency, Hollande emerged as a statesman-like figure, a change that included an image makeover, complete with a 10 kilo weight loss and designer glasses. Continue reading Monsieur President: Hollande era begins in France →

France

Could François Fillon have won Sunday’s French presidential election?

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When I look at the final tally of votes in Sunday’s French presidential election — François Hollande took nearly 52% of the vote against incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy’s 48% — I cannot help but note that the margin is actually lower than in 2007, when Sarkozy beat Ségolène Royal with 53% of the vote.

It’s quite stunning — an election that was supposed to be a landslide for Hollande, in which every poll showed him beating Sarkozy by anywhere from five points to double digits, turned out to be closer than the Sarkozy-Royal race.

So when I look at that — and when you look at exit poll data showing that many Hollande voters were motivated not by Hollande, but rather by the desire to give Sarkozy the boot, I really wonder what would have happened if Sarkozy had stepped down from the presidency in favor of his longtime prime minister François Fillon. Continue reading Could François Fillon have won Sunday’s French presidential election? →

European Union, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom

Three elections — and three defeats — for EU-wide austerity

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The concept of a ‘democratic deficit’ has long plagued the European Union — the EU’s history is littered with grand, transformative schemes planned by EU leaders that voters have ultimately rejected as too sweeping.  As recently as 2005, French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed EU constitution, smacking the EU elite for getting out too far in front of an electorate that clearly did not approve.

Sure enough, the story of the last three days — in the UK, in France and in Greece — will go down in EU history as a similar pivot point against German chancellor Angela Merkel’s attempt to impose strict fiscal discipline across the continent, even as additional electoral hiccups await in the North-Rhine Westphalia state elections later this week, the Irish referendum on the fiscal compact later this month and French and Dutch parliamentary elections due later this summer.

French president-elect François Hollande will now immediately become the face of the EU-wide opposition to austerity and is expected to challenge Merkel with a view that advocates more aggressive spending in a bid to balance fiscal responsibility with the promotion of economic growth — a distinct change in Franco-German relations after the ‘Merkozy’ years.  In his victory speech, Hollande called for a ‘fresh start for Europe’ and laid down his gauntlet: ‘austerity need not be Europe’s fate.’

It is an incredible turnaround from December, when Merkel and deposed French president Nicolas Sarkozy single-handedly pushed through the fiscal compact adopted by each of the EU member states (minus the UK and the Czech Republic), which would bind each member state to a budget deficit of no more than just 0.5% of GDP.  The treaty followed in the wake of the latest eurozone financial crisis last November, during which both the governments of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Georgios Papandreou in Greece fell, to be replaced by Berlin-approved technocratic governments, each tasked with the express purpose of making reforms to cut their governments’ respective budgets.

Continue reading Three elections — and three defeats — for EU-wide austerity →