Fully 66% of Socialist voters told a poll this week that they approved of Mr Sarkozy's left-wing appointments. (Economist, 24/05/2007)
The new President Sarkozy storms ahead, after a surprisingly good start
DURING the campaign, his opponents called him “dangerous” and “brutal”. They even threatened riots if he won. But France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has in his first week disarmed critics with an artful mix of political inclusiveness, policy creativity and symbolic renewal.
It is hard to overstate the impact of the choice of Bernard Kouchner, a man of the left and a hugely popular humanitarian champion, as foreign minister (see article). Had Mr Kouchner been lured into a minor ministerial job in a government of the right, the bridge-building symbolism would still have been clear. By giving him foreign affairs, France's public face to the world, Mr Sarkozy has deftly undercut his leftist opponents.
Mr Kouchner is one of four men of the left in the government of François Fillon, Mr Sarkozy's choice as prime minister. The new Europe minister, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, is an old family friend of the defeated Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal. Eric Besson, a junior minister for public policy attached to Mr Fillon's office, acted as Ms Royal's chief economic adviser earlier in her campaign. Martin Hirsch, who gets a junior anti-poverty portfolio, was head of Emmaüs France, a charity for the homeless. And on top of these four, Hervé Morin, once a right-hand man to François Bayrou, the centrist presidential candidate, is the new defence minister.
With seven women in a cabinet of 15, only two cabinet ministers who went to the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration, and the first Frenchwoman of North African origin in a top post (Rachida Dati, the justice minister, whose mother was a cleaning lady), Mr Sarkozy has stunned those who expected an ideological president. He has put merit before loyalty. And he has responded to a public desire for bipartisanship that was expressed in the strong first-round vote for Mr Bayrou.
The public seems to like it. Fully 66% of Socialist voters told a poll this week that they approved of Mr Sarkozy's left-wing appointments. The Socialist Party has fumbled for a response, managing only to evince sourness and confusion. It evicted Mr Kouchner from the party. François Hollande, its boss, was left looking vaguely absurd by asking voters to back Socialists in June's parliamentary election because “the French need to feel represented.”
Mr Sarkozy has been quick to stamp his mark and spring surprises elsewhere. This week, he invited in France's ecological protest groups, more used to taking their grievances to the streets than to the Elysée Palace. Alain Juppé, the new ecology minister, who converted to greenery during a year teaching in Canada after his suspension from public life for political corruption, symbolically staged a press conference under some trees.
For his part, Mr Fillon has announced that the unions have until September to do a deal over minimum service on public transport during strikes; and until December to agree to a new, single job contract meant to break down the labour market divide of insiders versus outsiders. A law giving universities more autonomy will be passed by an extraordinary parliamentary session in July, after the June election. Tax cuts are expected in the new government's first budget, due in September.
Other appointments also point to a possible new approach. By giving Christine Lagarde, former chief of a big American law firm, the agriculture ministry (traditionally a conservative bastion) Mr Sarkozy may be preparing the ground for a more flexible attitude to farm subsidies. An interim review of the European Union's common agricultural policy is due in 2008. Although she was careful to say this week that agriculture would continue to have a “strategic” role, Ms Lagarde also said that France could not continue its posture of “intransigence” for ever.
Mr Sarkozy's carve-up of ministerial portfolios reflects his own priorities. The finance minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, a popular former social-affairs minister who regenerated the industrial town of Valenciennes when he was its mayor, has taken a chunk of the jobs ministry. The idea is to persuade the French, weaned on subsidised job creation, that economic growth is the only sure source of employment opportunities. Similarly, Eric Woerth, the new budget minister, has inherited the public service, formerly a separate ministry, pointing to cuts in France's overweight bureaucracy. Mr Sarkozy has promised to replace only one in two retiring civil servants.
Even the new style is a break with Jacques Chirac—and not just in the presidential jogging outings and celebrity-style photos of the complex Sarkozy family. As president in charge of foreign and defence policy, he has already visited Berlin and Brussels. But he also dropped in on an aircraft factory and a hospital in his first few days, showing that he has no intention of leaving domestic policy to the prime minister. It is striking that he has opened up foreign jobs to the left and centre, but kept those that deal with domestic reform in the hands of his closest advisers.
Not all the changes will be smooth. Mr Borloo and Mr Woerth will have equal cabinet status, so it is not clear which of them will have more say over fiscal policy, central to the Sarkozy reform agenda. On social matters, the perils of broad-based government emerged after Mr Hirsch raised objections—only to withdraw them—to Mr Sarkozy's plan for a non-reimbursable charge for visits to the doctor.
Implementation of these plans will have to wait for the new parliament. Two-round legislative elections take place on June 10th and 17th. Mr Sarkozy seems well placed to win a hefty majority. One poll this week, by TNS-Sofres, gave his UMP party a solid 40% of the vote, with 28% for the Socialists and only 15% for Mr Bayrou's centrist Democratic Movement. This would translate into 365-415 seats, out of a total of 577, up from the 359 the UMP has now. Mr Bayrou's party, bereft of many deputies who have defected to Mr Sarkozy, would fall to single figures.
In “Testimony”, the book he wrote as a pre-campaign manifesto, Mr Sarkozy argued that “the biggest mistake, which is common, is to undertake reforms sequentially. First you do pensions, then education, and then finally welfare or immigration. With this system, you often end up stopping after the second reform, exhausted by the battles over the first.” If he wins such a huge parliamentary majority, Mr Sarkozy will have the strongest possible mandate to carry out a big burst of reform—and to face down the street protests that seem sure to greet it.
May 24th 2007 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition