Two years ago today...

Two years ago today, Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President of the French Republic.

Yesterday, a month before the European Elections (voters across Europe will elect their representatives to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France), the President delivered a speech (which you can read here, in French) defending his policies, and detailing his plans for the future.

For Sarkozy, the gravity of the economic crisis may just provide an opportunity to invent new ways to eliminate all the obstacles that inhibit economic growth and efficiency.

Yet, success, our degree of boldness really depend on our faith in the future. If we are more frightened than hopeful, if we believe in neither globalization nor the promises of tomorrow, then we will not prevail....We will only make it if we restore hope in those who have lost it, the President declared (my translation).

That will be a tall order in a country like France where, even before the current financial and economic meltdown, globalization was perceived as a threat by most to a way of life, and not the path to a brighter tomorow...

To make it palatable, or more palatable, I think Sarkozy wants to seize the opportunity offered by the crisis to demand and instore at the French but also the European level, a stricter regulation of the financial industry, and what he calls the moralization of capitalism, whereby salaries and bonuses of top management reflect performance, ability and viability of the firm, such that failure and even more so, bankruptcy are never rewarded.

This may be the only way to reconcile the French with globalization, which currently is synonimous with stock market crashes, greed, plant closures and massive unemeployment.

In France, people tend to have more faith and hope in, the government (though when asked, consistently complain about its performance, no matter who is in power), than they trust the private sector, to better their lot and protect their interests.

It is simply impossible to sell deregulation, and promote a policy of free markets and greater competitiveness, if the state is not sufficiently present to prevent any excesses in the financial markets, or board rooms.

This, I think, is the French model Sarkozy would like all Europe to share (though it seems clear the British would never buy this), but it remains to be seen even if a majority of the French would accept it...

The need for state protection, for social safety nets, the demand for global finance regulation; the need to build a new economic and monatery order; the need for justice, these are European ideas and values, which have been rehabilitated: Europe must not shy away from them...the President said (my translation).

Sarkozy's goal is a more energetic, dynamic common economic policy among the countries of the Euro group (to which Britain does not belong...), to facilitate Europe's return to growth.

Sarkozy's domestic ecomomic policy was focused on investment: in the banks (so that they would resume lending); the car industry (so that France's big three, Renault, Peugeot and Citroën would not close plants in France and the EU); in infrastructure and research and development to spur economic activity and prepare France for the future.

Sarkozy preferred this strategy to simply sending each French family a check, for the economic impact of that measure would have been short lived, a slight but evanescent boost.

This option was backed by the opposition Socialist party, while the unions demanded a general increase in salaries.

The Socialist party commemorated the anniversary by issuing a 32-page indictment called: Failure...Martine Aubry, the head of the party, considers that two years of Sarkozy has led to ineffectiveness and ever greater injustice.

What do the French make of two years of Sarkozyism?

If 85% consider him dynamic, and 75% brave, 55% judge that he is not a good president..

He has three years left to make them change their minds...