Redefining Europe?

In a historic moment, this weekend saw a new president elected in France. But this is not a simple handover from one leader to another. French politics has been shaken and the results are clear to see.

Francois Hollande received around 52% of the vote to wave Sarkozy from office. But Hollande rise to President-elect was anything but smooth: yet perhaps the most overwhelming hurdle was the inherent psychology of French citizens, apparently predisposed in favour of right-wing politicians.

Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UPM) party was a centre right organisation, and ever since the 90s, the French presidency has exclusively belonged to the right. More so, there is only one blemish on the right’s record of power since 1958: Francois Mitterrand, who served the country as president from the 80s till the mid-90s, is the only left wing leader in more than half a century. On top of that, Sarkozy is the first French president not to have won a second term in over thirty years. Certainly, the statistics were stalked in the incumbent head-of-state’s favour.

Therefore, whilst the media may be drawing attention to numerous bits of luck on the part of the incoming president, and a multitude of misfortune on the part of the departing, there was first and foremost a seeming political allegiance, a political bond, between president and people that needed to be severed.

Perhaps the legacy of Mitterrand still holds coinage with voters in the European country. After all, Francois successfully deployed a substantial economic turnaround, made sweeping technology changes, supported various activist movements and carefully balanced the power of France within Europe and the world. His period of power produced a France that was not only one of the strongest countries at the close of the twentieth century, but in its strongest position across the century as a whole.

As such, in times of similar economic failings, a possible identity crisis and continued French resistance and demonstrations against French rulings, Hollande appears a candidate very much in touch with his people, dubbed Francois II (signifying him as the second coming of Mitterrand). Other headlines proclaim him as ‘Mr Normal’.

Indeed, French presidencies of the late twentieth century were either held by old, hardened politicians, or apparent upstarts who had rose through their party ranks too quick for sufficient experience.  Here is an elect who not only has the fine-balance of experience and youth on his side, but is so seemingly straight-forward, if not a little reserved, that he has won the French people with his honesty and genuine persona.

A front-page "Letter to Mr President" by Francois-Regis Hutin in Ouest France wishes Mr Hollande "good luck". The paper says that "we count on you to arouse the dynamism of all the French... to reconcile the French, to help overcome the split between the included and the excluded, young people and old people, town and country, workers and pensioners, rich people and poor people."

Of course, this tackles the failings that are laid at the steps of Sarkozy’s regime. He was either despised as a friend of the rich by the left, or seen as the man that broke his word by the right, or by most as the man that promised reform, began to make steps in that direction and stopped far short of completion.

These issues need be addressed by the new President for sure. His period in charge will prove pivotal certainly to the shape of the French twenty-first century, if not for the most part of the next millennia. Hollande will govern a country where, as the historian and economist Nicolas Baverez says, "By 2025, we will know if France still ranks as a leading nation in the world."

Yet despite the new appeal of Hollande’s practicality and placidness, his offer of change and consolidation, there is remarkably little difference between the centre left and centre right candidacy campaigns. The deficit will be tackled slower under Hollande, and with more dependence on taxes, but otherwise, there is not too much that would rock the boat about this leader.

His trail, though igniting people with the promise of a zero deficit by 2017, has left little impression of the long term policies and positions of the President: rather, people have been swept along with the fervour of change, the promise of Mr Normal. After all, Hollande appeared less focussed on austerity measures that were favoured by his predecessor and Merkel. And with their policies only bringing about rising unemployment and debts, the public support has suddenly dried up for their strict measures.

All that is sure of Hollande’s term is that his decisions will carve out the path of future France: either rising like the beacon of the Eiffel from the storm of the Seine, or reaffirm dwindling power that would leave French surrendering to the mercy of Germans and Britons alike for the third time in a century.