After the lofty Left rhetoric of Sunday’s keynote speech to Socialist Party supporters at the Le Bourget convention centre, home of the Paris airshow, French presidential challenger François Hollande adopted a more down to earth approach when he outlined the details of his policy programme in the comparatively sobre surrounds of the Maison des métallos exhibition and meeting hall in Paris this week.
“On Sunday it was a question of addressing questions of equality and the values of the French Republic. Today he needed to show that he is serious and refuses to give in to the usual clever tricks,” said François Rebsamen, Socialist leader in the French Senate and an ally of Hollande. “We can no longer afford to make budgetary commitments that are subsequently opposed by the markets.”
With a many financial journalists in the audience on Thursday’s presentation, Hollande seemed more concerned about demonstrating his economic competence than about “battling the world of finance”, the promise he made to the cheering party faithful on Sunday. And as a result the policy presentation had something of the ENA elite graduate school (which Hollande attended) about it.
After focusing on his idea of the “French dream” at Le Bourget, Hollande outlined four key principles of his campaign on Thursday – clear thinking to deal with the economic crisis; a desire for change; justice; and clarity on the financing, method and timetable of his programme. He also hammered home his new motto of “bringing the world of finance under control”.
Manuel Valls, Hollande’s communications chief, explained the thinking: “French people expect him to outline a vision rooted in his values, which is what he did at Le Bourget, but also very precise measures, to address the lack of trust in politicians’ public statements.”
He also has to make a distinction between the “French dream, or the idea of progress”, and “inspiring French people to dream, which is not what Hollande is proposing in the current situation”, said Valls.
Campaign organiser Stéphane Le Foll, Hollande’s loyal supporter for the past 15 years, offers a more political analysis of his positioning. “There is the Left and there is [centrist candidate François] Bayrou. We need to take bites out of both sides’ support because, this time more than ever, everything will depend on the outcome of the first round of the election. François Hollande is maintaining his line between their two positions with real consistency.”
'Now we need to go the distance'
Hollande summed up the attitude he intends to adopt during his five-year presidency, if he is elected in May, when he stated: “I will only promise what I am able to deliver. Nothing more and nothing less”. An example of this is his dropping of the Socialist Party’s plan to create 500,000 state-run childcare places. “I am still in favour of this. But I don’t give a figured target if I am not capable of achieving it. And, in the current situation, it is not possible for me present a figured target,” he said.
The same goes for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rule of not replacing one in two retiring civil servants. Hollande wants to halt the policy but not abolish it completely. On Thursday he again committed himself to maintaining the number of civil servants over his five-year term, with an increase in the number of positions in education offset by declines elsewhere.
And, more generally, Hollande acknowledges that the start of his five-year term will mainly be devoted to controlling public spending. In any case, by adopting Sarkozy’s commitment to get France’s deficit below the EU limit of 3% of GDP by next year, he has no other choice.
As a result he says his presidency will be divided into two phases. The first will be concentrated on structural reforms, such as his planned reform of the tax system, a new decentralisation programme, a package of measures to boost growth including aid for small firms, and policies to bring the world of finance under control. Other measures that will be implemented immediately include the reintroduction of retirement at 60 for those who have worked 41 years, steps in favour of youth employment and the retention of older workers, and a move to increase housing provision.
The rest of the programme will have to wait for the second phase of Hollande’s presidency, which will only start once France has returned to growth. “Then we will be able to go further on the redistribution of wealth,” he said.
While he gave details on some measures and how they will be financed, Hollande skilfully kept some areas vague. When he talked of making politicians ineligible for office for 10 years for “acts of corruption”, he held back from any details on what this might include. And when he talked about immigration, it was simply about legalizing individuals’ situations on a case by case basis. And anything to do with pay, jobs or the minimum wage is to be dealt with after the election at a pay conference with the unions.
It is an election that Hollande increasingly believes that he can win. He now not only describes Sarkozy as “the outgoing president” but also as his “predecessor”. “It is always good to give another major blow to an opponent in difficulty, but we also need to take care to avoid the growing belief that it is already won,” said campaign team member Olivier Faure. “We need to keep our feet on the ground,” agreed Le Foll.
More details of Hollande’s programme will be given in the course of speeches and appearances around France over the coming months. He is due to make a speech on health policy next week, followed by one on education on February 9th, agriculture at the end of February and decentralisation on March 3rd. Major rallies are planned in Rouen on February 15th, Lyon on March 1st and Rennes on March 20th . “We made a good start at Le Bourget, but now we need to pace the campaign and go the distance,” says Valls.
'A socialist who is not ecologist'
But while the speech at Le Bourget found favour on the Left and caught the ruling UMP party off guard, Thursday’s presentation led to renewed criticism from all sides.
On the Right, Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party plans above all to contest the costings of Hollande’s measures, and his proposal to abolish Sarkozy’s generous tax treatment of overtime pay, which UMP Member of Parliament Jérôme Chartier described as an “attack on the middle classes”. He has promised that the UMP will issue its own costings of Hollande’s programme in the next few days. “As soon as he is accused of inconsistency, the socialist candidate responds with the most simplistic attack on President Sarkozy. And yet while he bluntly criticises the reforms of the past five years, he does not talk about reversing them,” said UMP national secretary Frank Riester. Transport Minister Thierry Mariani said that although Hollande claims he will raise money by increasing taxes on the wealthy, his measures will actually hit those on average incomes.
Centrist candidate François Bayrou also sees Hollande’s manifesto as marking an irresponsible lurch to the Left. “There is not one single measure for the economy in this programme,” he said in a radio interview. “This programme is far removed from what is needed if we are to have a credible return to a balanced budget.”
Meanwhile, the Green party, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, was unsurprised by Hollande’s programme. “It is the programme of a socialist who is not an ecologist,” commented Denis Baupin, one of the Europe Ecologie-Les Verts negotiators of last year’s electoral pact with the Socialist Party. “On nuclear power and transport he is sticking to the positions he took in the [Socialist Party presidential] primaries and will not change them. It confirms the differences in our analyses. His belief in economic growth has not changed.”
The far-left Front de gauche (Left Front) coalition accuses Hollande of being too timid. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, co- president of the Parti de Gauche (Party of the Left), regretted that Hollande only proposes to raise the top tax rate to 45%. “It’s good because it would mark the end of the Sarkozy era, but under [Prime Minister Jean-Pierre] Raffarin it was 48%, under [Lionel] Jospin it was 52%, and at the start of the [1981 Socialist-Communist] common programme it was 65%,” he said.
Martine Billard, the Party of the Left s other co-president, feared that Hollande’s pension proposals could set in stone the need to pay contributions for 41-1/2 years to get a full state pension, therefore effectively marking the end of the right to retire at 60. And Communist Party national secretary Pierre Laurent said Hollande “remains trapped by the contradiction of trying to carry out left-wing policies while at the same time claiming to respect the budget cuts announced by a right-wing government in order to satisfy the financial markets”. He also voiced concern over Hollande’s policy on wages, asking; “How can you contemplate waiting two years before starting on the redistribution of wealth when half of all employees earn less than 1,500 euros a month?”
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English version: Steve Whitehouse
(Editing by Graham Tearse)