Europe is waiting

Nicolas Sarkozy has officially become the new President, the 23rd, of the French Republic. The ceremony of his swearing into office took place at the Elysée on 16 May. Sarkozy arrived there accompanied by his family, and was received by the outgoing President Jacques Chirac, who had taken his leave with a speech on television on the previous evening. The two met together behind closed doors, given the importance, and the secrecy, of the information that passed between them, such as the use of nuclear weapons. Sarkozy then presented himself before the outgoing President, the President of the Senate and National Assembly, while the head of France’s Constitutional Court swore him into office. “Don’t disappoint the French” and “follow the demand for change”: with these vows the Sarkozy era began. He immediately chose his Prime Minister: François Fillon. The executive is slimmed down: only 15 ministers, 7 of them women. Thanks to his political instinct, tenacity and perseverance, Nicolas Sarkozy emerged victorious from the presidential elections, with 53% of the vote. His main merit is that of having marginalized Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the extreme right. He succeeded in attracting the majority of Le Pen’s electorate. The new President of the Republic succeeded in reconstructing a right wing in politics that dares to say its name and has no fear of appearing as such. So a new era begins. And that is fortunate for France. The new generation that now arrives in power is that of the 50-year-olds. These fiercely fought elections demonstrate that the French, including the young of voting age, have rediscovered a passion for politics. The percentage of those that abstained is the lowest ever registered since 1965, date of the first elections by universal suffrage during the 5th Republic, at the time of General De Gaulle. But it should be explained why the electors remained so uncertain right to the end. During an excessively long electoral campaign, the candidates only sought the recipes for the good management of a country that is too inward looking and too hastily compared with a “vale of tears”. Nicolas Sarkozy has become the President of all the French. He will therefore have to avoid arousing antagonism between social groups, between generations, between the well-off and those who have difficulty in making ends meet in a difficult world. If he wants to work for the good of everyone, he will have to distance himself from the power of money and of the mass media too complacent towards him. In other words, this hyperactive man must not trust in his adversaries, but in the first place he must not even trust in himself. With 47% of the vote, the Socialist candidate displayed boldness of vision, unsettling the good conscience of the leaders of her party. But she had no time to correct the obsolete theses of a Socialist Party that failed to radically overhaul itself, as have done its counterparts in all the countries of the European Union. The opening to François Bayrou and his electorate (18.5% of the vote during the first round) procured us a television debate full of liveliness and wisecracks between the firebrand of the left and the protagonist of a centre risen from its own ashes. But the hand of friendship came too late, and the die had already been cast. We may take heart from the defeat of the supporters of the “no” in the referendum on Europe and those extremists who tirelessly preached an unrealisable revolution.On the evening of the elections, before his own supporters, the newly elected candidate proclaimed his own faith in Europe and announced that “France would return to Europe”. He proposed to his European partners a “simplified treaty”, not subject to referendum, since it would be based merely on the greater efficiency of the institutions in Brussels. More specifically, it would involve the introduction of a permanent, and not revolving, Presidency of the European Council and the creation of a real European Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This treaty, announced the new President of France, would not claim to substitute the Constitution, but be a remedy to the institutional crisis opened in Europe by the French and Dutch rejection of the Constitution in the spring of 2005. Under the German Presidency, an intensive political negotiation will now be opened between the 27 member states to try to awaken Europe from its prolonged coma.