ANALYSIS: Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency of France has disappointed many but few see a viable alternative, writes LARA MARLOWE
TWO YEARS ago today, 53 per cent of French voters elected Nicolas Sarkozy president of their country. Despite misgivings, there was a sense of imminent change. Like an ageing woman who yields to an ardent suitor, France suddenly imagined herself regaining youth and dynamism. Now the suitor appears vain and selfish, and France thinks he led her on. An opinion poll published on Monday showed that 65 per cent of the French are “disappointed” by the first two years of Sarkozy’s presidency and 63 per cent judge his record as “rather negative”.
Sarkozy’s core promise was to help France shed the carapace, the protective shell, of economic and social constraints she has accumulated over the centuries. He was going to usher in economic growth by freeing up the labour market, achieve full employment.
“I will be the president of purchasing power,” Sarkozy said. “I’ll go and fetch [economic] growth with my teeth.”
Obviously, the global economic crisis is partly responsible for Sarkozy’s inability to drag France kicking and screaming into the 21st century. But he had 15 months to reform France before the crisis reached Europe. During that period, and since, one has seen much agitation and gesticulation. Not a week passes without the “hyper-president”, accompanied by a horde of journalists, travelling to the provinces. Every month, there’s a “major” televised speech. Yet one sees little real change. The French social model which Sarkozy criticised has turned out to be a blessing. The painstakingly accumulated carapace he wanted to blow apart has protected France from the worst ravages of the crisis.
Sarkozy was elected on a reform ticket, but anyone who believed he would be France's Margaret Thatcher long ago shed that illusion. To mark his second anniversary in office, the Institut Thomas More, an independent think tank in Brussels, conducted an in-depth study of Sarkozy's reforms in 22 areas, much of which was published yesterday by the economic newspaper La Tribune.
The study credits Sarkozy with initiating 77.3 per cent of 1,180 measures he committed to, but says he’s seen only 40.7 per cent through to completion. The break with the past promised by Sarkozy “has not really taken place”, says Jean-Thomas Lesueur of the institute. “We’re caught in a constant barrage of measures, which haven’t really changed the lives of those who elected Sarkozy. And his action is difficult to read, because one doesn’t see the priorities in the pile-up of initiatives.”
The institute gives Sarkozy an overall rating of 10.5 on a scale of 20. Immigration and taxation, the two areas in which he received the highest marks (14.5 and 14 out of 20) for keeping his word exemplify the selfish France personified by Sarkozy. The immigration law passed by Sarkozy in November 2007 has substantially increased the deportation of illegal aliens, and established quotas for foreigners whose presence is needed by France. During the French presidency, Sarkozy persuaded the EU to adopt a similar policy.
Three months after his election, Sarkozy passed a fiscal package that lifted tax on overtime, cut death duties, lowered the maximum tax paid by the wealthy from 60 to 50 per cent and granted tax cuts to those who invest in small and medium-size enterprises. Sarkozy’s election night party at Fouquet’s luxury hotel and restaurant, followed by a three-day break on a yacht in the Mediterranean, saddled him with a reputation as the friend of the rich and famous.
His third wife, Carla Bruni, has helped him attenuate the bling-bling image. But his refusal to reconsider the tax shield for the rich or consider raising the minimum wage (as his predecessors did annually) make it clear where his heart lies. Sarkozy’s biggest reform in foreign policy has been his rapprochement with Washington and London, as characterised by France’s return last month to the integrated command of Nato and the abandonment of France’s traditional Arab policy. The two add up to the death of Gaullism, the dominant ideology of post-war France. Ironically, the liberal Anglo-Saxon economic system that Sarkozy so admired collapsed before he could meld France to it.
Though he promised to strengthen the government and national assembly, Sarkozy has concentrated all power in the Élysée (the office of the president) – and his own person – in unprecedented fashion. In Abuse of Power, the scathing book published last week by Francois Bayrou, the centrist leader, Bayrou calls the president’s mode of government “ego-cracy”. Sarkozy’s campaign slogan, notes Eric Fottorino, the director of Le Monde newspaper, might have been “Yes, I can.”
To use an old French expression, Sarkozy has the quality of his defects. Yes, he is ill-tempered and ill-mannered, aggressive, impulsive and prone to gaffes. The upside is energy, intelligence, determination and frank-speaking. These traits explain why he performed brilliantly in the crisis last October, convening the heads of state and government of the eurogroup at short notice to draw up a plan to inject liquidity into the financial system, guarantee inter-bank loans and promote the recapitalisation of banks.
There’s a flip side to the 65 per cent disappointment rating mentioned above, too. Sarkozy takes heart from repeated polls showing that up to 70 per cent of the French believe that “the opposition would not do better than the present government if they were in power”.
Sarkozy is blessed to face such pathetic opposition. “The right fights,” notes the left-wing senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “The socialist party is paralysed by fear. The right has put its boots on; the social democrats are wearing slippers.”
Polls show that Sarkozy’s UMP party is likely to win the European elections next month, and that he would again take 30 per cent of the vote – 10 points more than Ségolène Royal, Sarkozy’s unsuccessful Socialist Party rival for the presidency, or Bayrou – if the first round of the 2007 election were replayed now. Like Royal and Bayrou, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Martine Aubry and Dominique de Villepin – other potential rivals to Sarkozy – all suffer from serious handicaps.
Like the French nation, Sarkozy is fraught with contradictions. If he is unable to deliver the profound change he promised, it will be to a large extent because his compatriots do not really want it or cannot agree on it.
Sarkozy has at least three more years – and probably eight – to keep trying.
Lara Marlowe is Paris Correspondent of The Irish Times