Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, trailing in opinion polls and struggling to kick-start her presidential campaign, unveiled 100 proposals today that she said would make France a stronger, fairer place.
The policies were drawn up following some 6,000 nationwide debates and focused mainly on social, environmental and economic issues, pushing Ms Royal to the left of the political spectrum while maintaining traditionalist French values.
"Today I offer you the presidential pact. One hundred proposals for France to rediscover a shared ambition, pride and fraternity," Ms Royal told some 8,000 flag-waving supporters at a rally in a Paris suburb.
Her pact contained promises to boost small pensions by 5 per cent, to consolidate the 35-hour work week, to lift the minimum wage to €1,500 from €1,254 and establish a military-style boot camp for young offenders.
She also included controversial plans to set up "citizen juries" to evaluate the work of parliamentarians, reduce class sizes, hit big-earning oil companies with a special levy and make it harder for firms to rebase to lower-cost countries.
Ms Royal (53) won her party's nomination in November and appeared on course to become France's first woman president, but has since fallen behind her rightist rival Nicolas Sarkozy, hit by a string of gaffes and signs of internal party dissent.
Today's speech was seen as a crunch moment in her campaign for the April-May election, and almost all Socialist party heavyweights were in the audience to hear her proposals.
Critics ridiculed her "participative debates" as a form of "political karaoke", but Ms Royal defended the meetings on Sunday, saying they had enabled her to see France's real problems.
"With me, never again will politics take place without you," she said, standing up straight, looking stern and sometimes clenching her fist as she spoke.
Ms Royal faces an uphill battle to regain the momentum from Interior Minister Sarkozy, who has built up a four to five percentage point lead in the polls after winning his party's nomination last month and storming onto the hustings.
Ms Sarkozy held his own rally today to prevent Ms Royal from hogging the limelight, and promised to be "the president of reconciliation" in a move aimed at softening his hard-man image.