Posted by
Dr Pangloss on Monday, February 19, 2007 5:46:26 PM
The voters of France may face a very unusual decision in the upcoming presidential elections. They may actually face a real choice.
This is unusual because of the De Gaullist style of post war centreist politics. This time around there are two very different visions of France, first there is the the vision of Segolene Royal who aside from her more fuzzy focus on the family esposuses the polotics of the left, she is in favour of the re-nationalisation of certain sectors of the economy, the penalisation of companies that pay dividends to their shareholders rather than reinvest directly back into the company, and the sweeping away of recent employment laws to make it once again nearly impossible to fire someone.
Then we have Nicholas Sarkozy who is centre-right and very much in the style of Tony Blair and has gone out of his way to be associated with the British PM. Mr Sarkozy is of the free enterprise but with the social face familiar to most western Europeans.
Voters seem to be split more or less down the middle at the minute giving Mr Sarkozy a slight but noticeable edge. The incumbent Mr Chirac in the Elysee Palace has been luke warm at best with Mr Sarkozy which seems unusual to a lot of observers given that Mr Sarkozy is from Chirac's own party. But the ambivilance they have shown each other down the years is well documented.
Assuming that Mr Sarkozy gets the nod, with modest reforms of the French economy which may even quicken to dare one say it a more anglo-american model. What however will be the landscape if Segolene Royal gets in? Here is the real imponderable because although she has an agenda for an increase in social spending promises, she is somewhat vague on where the money is the come from. And of course there will be furrowed brows in Brussels, because France may have to ignore parts of the growth and stability pact which is key to keeping the Euro currency in agreed parameters, (although France and Germany have ignored parts of the pact in the past).
So whatever the French decide it looks certain that there will be a shift from the De Gaullist politics of the past. The question then will be, will they decide to pull back from further liberalisation of the economy to a more isolated fortress France or a reaching out the the global economy, a place which could mean even more radical changes to the economy, ones which even Mr Sarkozy does not currently have in mind.
Au revoir