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French Election Fallout
Prime minister Raffarin keeps his job - for now. It's curtains for finance minister Francis Mer and education minister Luc Ferry. France's most outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, Dominique de Villepin, moves sideways to the interior ministry, where he replaces president Chirac's only competent minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy, unique among Chirac's party because he managed to increase his support over the election weeks, is expected to be offered another poisoned chalice, this time the finance ministry.
The reshuffle follows the second round of France's regional elections, held on Sunday, in which President Chirac's supposedly centre-right party was trounced by an alliance of socialists, communists and greens.
While the loss of almost every regional council in France will not prevent Chirac's UMP party from governing the country as a whole, it is a devastating rejection of the party's policies and attempts to reform France's stagnant economy. Voters are said to be unhappy with stratospheric levels of unemployment as well as minor tinkering with France's cumbersome state bureaucracy and labour laws aimed at creating jobs.
Chirac, it seems, has taken their message. Ferry, who faced the almost impossible task of persuading schools and universities to adapt to the real world, lost his head to the far-left teachers. Francis Mer is said to have had enough of the finance ministry, even before he was booted out.
Mer, too, tried hard against impossible odds, not least the lack of support from his ultimate boss, Chirac. He is probably best-known to EURSOC readers as one of the wreckers of the single currency's stability pact, which collapsed last year when France and Germany broke budget deficit rules. However, at home, he attempted to balance much-needed tax cuts with hugely unpopular public sector spending cuts. Again, his head will serve as warning to any future finance minister who thinks of bringing France into the modern age.
Will Nicolas Sarkozy be up to the job?
One would imagine the signs are good. Sarkozy has put more cops on the street and reduced France's huge road deaths tally. His setbacks - in Corsica, or in his Muslim Council, where France's Muslims voted to be represented by hardline extremists rather than the moderates Sarkozy had backed - have been forgotten by most voters. Importantly, the omnipresent and hyperactive interior minister has persuaded French voters that something is being done by the government to fight insecurity.
It will be fascinating to watch if he will be able to take on France's neanderthal unions with the same success as he had with drunk drivers and muggers. The unions, always keen to remind France of their continuing relevance, will relish the prospect of a scrap with the country's most prominent and popular politican. French unions have incredibly twitchy trigger fingers when it comes to calling strikes - it is not unlikely that Sarkozy's appointment will provoke a number of high-profile street protests.
The interior minister is already a hate figure on France's left. Going head to head with its beloved public sector unions will antagonise the left even more.
Sarkozy, for his part, will look forward to the fight: What better way to prove to the wider electorate his presidential potential than winning a struggle with the unions? How better to announce his candidacy than to bring France into the twenty first century? He has already declared that France's reforms are not progressing fast enough for his tastes.
It promises to be a titanic struggle - if indeed it ever begins.
President Chirac loathes Sarkozy, and much as he would love to see his rival destroyed by the unions, the end of the country's most popular minister's career would prove once and for all that France was ungovernable. Chirac will lean heavily on Sarkozy to reduce reforms. After all, the electorate has comprehensively rejected progress. A spell trying to iron out France's troubles with the stability pact could force the spotlight away from Sarkozy for a while.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin's 100-day reprieve is unlikely to allow much room for further reform. The prime minister, who resigned on Sunday only to be reappointed, has been given until the European elections to convince voters to switch back to the UMP.
This is a desperately unfair use of a fundamentally decent man. Chirac's strategy in appointing his ministers appears to be based on picking fall guys who will keep the heat off him, and Raffarin, rather than being given a second chance, has really been served a three-month notice. It is highly unlikely that the UMP will bounce back in the EU elections. Raffarin is finished, and like Francis Mer, could reasonably complain that he was abandoned by his president when it became clear that France's voters were more resistant to reform than was previously expected.
Also moving on is France's foreign minister, poet Dominique de Villepin. Villepin was tipped to replace Raffarin as PM, though the fact that he has never stood for election was thought to be a handicap to his appointment. This didn't prevent him from spending taxpayers money on the delivery by courier of dozens of copies of his last book to France's "most important figures."
Villepin's flamboyant opposition to the invasion of Iraq wrecked Franco-American relations, possibly for decades. As the shadow of terrorism passes over Europe, most would argue that the west needs to stand united against this horror.
Villepin, perhaps more than any other public figure, split the west in half. His sideways shift to the interior ministry was unsuspected, but will be welcomed by most western leaders. Villepin personified a kind of Gallic arrogance that exasperated his allies as much as it delighted his boss, Jacques Chirac. He will not be missed, though his likely successor, EU commissioner Michel Barnier, is not expected to introduce any policy changes.
It will be interesting, however, to see how the impeccably dressed and groomed Dominique de Villepin will follow up Nicolas Sarkozy's 'hands on' approach at the interior ministry. Sarkozy spent his days making visits to under-siege police stations in the middle of France's toughest estates. It is difficult to imagine Villepin mucking in in the same fashion.
And Chirac? Despite a reconfiguration of European politics that suits the Franco-German axis, these are dark days for his presidency.
The conviction for corruption that was slapped on his closet ally Alain Juppé earlier this year turned many voters away from his party - not least because they knew that only Chirac's presidential immunity keeps him out of court. The brief spell of unity that followed his defeat of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his opposition to the Iraq war has dissolved. An inveterate political survivor, Jacques Chirac is likely to spend the remaining years of his presidency distancing himself from unpopular reforms at home and driving forward French self-aggrandisement projects abroad.
Watch out for more French interest in the EU and yet more anti-US antics from Jacques Chirac this year.
