“Time flies when your’e having fun” they say. Well, if that’s the case, Sarkozy’s last eighteen months haven’t just flown by, they’ve rocketed by!!

He’s been everywhere, from Peking to Portugal, from Washington to Warsaw. He’s met everyone too. From Bush to Obama, from Hu Jintao to the Dalai Lama.
And he is, let’s not forget, the French AND European President.

So what has all his hyper activity resulted in?

Well, the results are mixed, although they are better than he could have hoped for, or expected.

After spending six months being called a fascist, a king, a dwarf and a dictator by the left and its supporters, he finally began trying to do what he was elected to do. That is, reform this notoriously nostalgic country whose inhabitants generally equate reform with the-end-of-France-as-it-has-always-existed. The result is surprisingly positive.

He has actually succeeded, with the help of the Government, in reforming the pension system, the legal framework of national TV, the Constitution (unbelievable huh?), the university financing system, and the Government has also implemented a law which guarantees minimum service during public sector strikes, and another banning smoking in all workplaces, restaurants, in fact everywhere but outside and at home. In the pipeline is further reform of the catastrophically outdated school education and further reform in work and contract legislation. Most of this legislation is approved by public opinion.

Less well received, though, was his (in?)famous “Fiscal Package”, which was seen by many, even some of his supporters, as being overly-generous to the rich whereas the middle and lower classes were (and still are) being asked to tighten their belts. He gave himself an enormous pay rise too, which didn’t help. Proposed legislation on the collection and use of criminal statistics also had to be watered down.

Upcoming legislation in trouble includes proposals to free up shops and businesses from very tight Sunday-trading laws (the Catholic and union lobby), and certain aspects of judicial law, notably reform of the magistrature and the penal classification of young offenders.

Then there’s his European Presidency, which ends next week. A general and reasonable criticism is that he has failed (then again who hasn’t) to unify Europe in terms of long-term diplomatic, economic and social legislation issues. The European Defence Force is also on semi-hold, notably due to fears of the British getting the lion’s share of operational control over it. This hasn’t stopped some progress though, like the coordinated response to Somalian piracy, which is even being co-ordinated from England. His ideas for a Mediterranean economic organisation (from which France in particular would have had the most to gain) had to be severely watered down.

Major successes include his firm stance, echoed by other European and particularly Eastern European countries, on the Georgian crisis, which paid off in terms of Russia having to back down on certain of its demands.

The biggest success of all has been his handling of the Economic crisis, during which he managed (with the help of Brown and Aznar) to get Europe round the table and agree on a general response. It’s not perfect, notably due to German objections having to be taken into account, but the fact that Europe was able to speak with more-or-less one voice was a major achievement in itself.

His European adventure has also pushed up his ratings in France. Most people think that his Presidency has been a relative success.

And this has translated into his being able to persuade the French that he and the government are not responsible for the fact that recent economic events are going to have a hard impact here, as they shall elsewhere. Convenient, but that’s the way the dice roll.

His biggest ally during his eighteen months in office though, has been the Socialist Party.

Yes, your eyes are ok, and no this is not a typing error, and no I have not gone crazy.

The Socialist Party has saved Sarkozy.

He has been lucky enough to have an opposition party in such a state of disorganisation and petty internal feuding that the opposition has not been able to mount credible counter-attacks against his actions. The best they have managed is “total and frontal” opposition to anything and everything, without being able to offer any credible alternatives. The French have understood this of course, to the point where a common joke here is, even among Socialists themselves, when asked if they are socialists by those who don’t know them, to answer “Yes, I’m a socialist, but don’t worry, I’m getting treatment”.

So, love him or hate him, Nicolas Sarkozy is on a roll, mostly because a lack of serious opposition to his policies.

This will be of invaluable help to him because now that his European Presidency is over he will have to get back down to the more mundane and thankless task of running France’s internal affairs.

And there will be much to do.....

So, my marks for Pupil Nicolas? Oh, it’s the christmas period, so I’m feeling magnanimous. Let’s say 6.5 out of ten.

Michael

(Image – lepoint.fr)