French President Nicolas Sarkozy named moderate conservative Francois Fillon as prime minister today.
He is banking on the Mr Fillon's negotiating skills with trade unions to ease the passage of his programme of reforms.
Shortly after taking over from Jacques Chirac yesterday, Mr Sarkozy underscored his intention to carry out a series of reforms, such as modernising the country's inflexible economy, which the prime minister will be in charge of implementing.
Mr Fillon (53), masterminded Mr Sarkozy 's campaign and worked with powerful trade unions as social affairs minister to push through sensitive pension reforms in 2003, making him a natural choice to spearhead changes to labour laws and the pensions system.
"The French have had enough of nothing ever improving in their daily lives," Mr Sarkozy said.
In his inaugural speech at the president's Élysée palace shortly after yesterday's handover, Mr Sarkozy said: "The people have entrusted me with a mandate. I will fulfil it. I will fulfil it scrupulously."
To do that, he will need to secure a majority in next month's parliamentary election or face the prospect of "cohabiting" with a left-wing government, which would compromise his reform agenda.
A poll yesterday put support for his UMP party at 40 per cent, an improvement of 1.5 points compared to the last election in 2002, which the right won. The opposition Socialists and their allies were roughly unchanged at 28 per cent.