Hollande’s first order of business is euro crisis
PARIS —Francois Hollande will be sworn in as leader of France Tuesday — only to face an immediate reminder of the extent to which its power is constrained by its ties to a debt-wracked Europe.
The Elysée Palace ceremony and associated pomp — an open-topped ride in a classic Citroen DS up the Champs Elysees — will be followed within hours by a flight to Berlin. There, France’s new Socialist leader will try to find common ground with Germany’s conservative leader Angela Merkel, despite their differing views on how to deal with eurozone deficits.
First, however, the 57-year-old wants to begin with a sombre celebration of his campaign themes: a return to “normality” after Sarkozy’s frenetic rule, the plight of youth and the cause of social justice.
“His deepest wish is to be a normal president,” his former partner Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children and the Socialists’ defeated 2007 candidate, said Sunday.
The swearing-in ceremony will be held in the elegant Elysée Palace, but will be a relatively simple affair, with no other heads of state invited and neither his children nor those of his partner Valerie Trierweiler present.
The first order of business will be to nominate a prime minister, probably the safe choice of the Socialists’ leader in parliament Jean-marc Ayrault, although other names are circulating.
Hollande wants to renegotiate the fiscal pact agreed on by his predecessor in order to give EU members more leeway to invest for growth, but Berlin insists recovery will be secure only when deficits are brought under control.
The incoming French government is confident a compromise can be reached, but some here point to the political mayhem in Greece — where voters brought down a government over austerity — and to the problems in Spain and Italy.
“We didn’t vote for an EU president called Mrs. Merkel who makes sovereign decisions for the rest of us,” Socialist spokesman Benoit Hamon said Sunday. “We want to renegotiate this pact. Austerity led Greece into failure.”