One Year Into Hollande Presidency in France, ‘a Sense of Drift’

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/europe/year-into-hollande-presidency-a-sense-of-drift.html

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PARIS — The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently gave a speech to a telecommunications conference in Montreal. “I feel good,” he said, grinning. “And when I look at those who succeeded me, I even feel very good.”

For François Hollande, the man who took the presidency away from Mr. Sarkozy last May, it has been a “terrible year,” or so says even the center-left newspaper Le Monde. The paper devoted an entire section to the president’s troubles, sweeping in the ailing economy, record unpopularity in the polls, open strains with Germany and divisions within his own Socialist Party.

The bold military intervention in Mali was called “the exception” for a president who is seen as pleasant, uncharismatic and unauthoritative — read “unpresidential” — by many who supported him a year ago. In opinion polls, only a quarter of the French view him favorably.

Mr. Hollande “hasn’t kept his campaign promises, to relaunch growth, create jobs,” said Shami Bashir, 26, in an unemployment office in the Paris suburbs where he was seeking work in catering. “You have the impression things can’t go more badly, and then, bam, you hear it’s getting worse.”

Amélie Donnini, 29, said that Mr. Sarkozy “would be much better at managing the situation,” adding: “He, at least, had broad shoulders. Hollande? Pfff.”

A year into the Hollande presidency, France seems to be stumbling along, with critics speaking of an amiable aimlessness, lack of direction and discipline, of small steps in the direction of economic reform. The Socialist Party, and even some of the president’s ministers, seem to work against him and his policies, and yet there is no obvious sanctioning of the dissenters.

Even the president of the National Assembly, Claude Bartolone, a Socialist, has called for a “second wind” in the government and for a possible confrontation with Germany over austerity policies that prioritize debt reduction over stimulus for growth. Mr. Hollande “calls this ‘friendly tension’ ” with Germany, Mr. Bartolone told Le Monde. “For me, it’s tension, period, and, if needed, a confrontation.”

The open strains with Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is engaged in an election campaign that the French government clearly hopes she will lose to the Social Democrats, has been a good example of Mr. Hollande’s difficulties — and his style. He has allowed some ministers to criticize Germany sharply; he has allowed the Socialist Party to draft a paper citing Ms. Merkel’s “selfish intransigence”; he has allowed other ministers to attack the party document, which was then revised. But he has not made his own position clear.

The “kerfuffle over Germany speaks volumes,” said François Heisbourg, of the Foundation for Strategic Research. “But one would think the president would find an opportunity to state his own position clearly.” Instead, Mr. Heisbourg said, “there is a sense of drift.”

There are rumors of a coming shake-up, which the Élysée Palace will deny until it happens. For now, a senior Hollande aide describes the president as “calm” and “Zen,” conscious that he has four more years to change France and careful not to move too quickly.

But the French seem to want action in a crisis, and a president who better fits the semi-monarchical model of the Fifth Republic, not the “normal president” Mr. Hollande promised. They liked Mr. Sarkozy’s activism, even if they came to dislike his personality and style enough to dethrone him.

Mr. Hollande won a year ago because he promised “change is now” and was the “anti-Sarkozy,” said Pascal Perrineau, director of the Center for Political Research at the Institut d’Études Politiques. “But the French are not at all convinced by this normal president. He seems more like a prime minister; he does not seem to incarnate the state.”

Mr. Hollande “acts like the head of the Socialist Party, always looking for compromise at the price of a certain ambiguity,” Mr. Perrineau said.

It is one thing not to be a “hyper-president,” Mr. Perrineau said. “But what is he? A ‘hypo-president,’ a minor one.”

Mr. Heisbourg said that the problem “goes beyond the lack of authority to a widespread lack of professionalism in the government and at the Élysée.”

“The net result is extremely chaotic decision preparation and decision-making,” he added. “For the first three or four months, you expect this, but not after a year.”

On the economy, there have been modest changes to loosen the labor market and promote competitiveness, but Mr. Hollande seems unwilling to boast about them, because they go against the grain of his party.

Mr. Hollande has set himself “one benchmark, that unemployment will peak at the end of the year,” Mr. Heisbourg said. “But there’s no sign of anything that would lead a reasonable person to expect that to come true. It’s not credible, and people don’t believe it, and people are right.”

Still, Mr. Hollande’s economic policies, which have delayed cuts in public spending until next year, are sensible in a recession, said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Center for European Reform, and his fight against austerity is gaining traction in Brussels, despite frustration with him.

“Given the constraints, I think the French government strategy is about as good as it gets,” Mr. Tilford said. “They are talking the line on austerity but obviously trying to limit the damage to an already weak economy.”

France, given its size and importance, is “acknowledged to be different” in Brussels and in Berlin, Mr. Tilford said. The main reason France’s borrowing costs are so low is that “investors are sure the European Central Bank will do whatever it has to do to keep France solvent.” On Friday, the European Commission indicated it would give Paris more time to get its budget deficit down so long as serious changes were made.

Mr. Hollande has four more years, but Mr. Perrineau sees trouble ahead, with more demonstrations in the streets and local elections that will be painful, given the rifts in his party.

Gérard Grunberg, a political scientist at the Institut d’Études Politiques, wrote last week about the Socialist Party’s “flight into the past,” with its criticism of Germany, the European Union and the modest labor-market changes that Mr. Hollande has negotiated with wary unions.

“Even for experienced observers, the current trend of the Socialist Party can only leave one stupefied,” Mr. Grunberg wrote. “The Socialist Party seems to have abandoned any serious ambition to support its own government in its reform efforts.”

At the unemployment office, Nabil Sim, 34, said that Mr. Hollande’s critics were too hasty. “Up until now, I’m not satisfied,” he said. “But we’ll see in three or four months, perhaps. Everything can change. Is he going to do better in the coming years? I don’t know. That depends entirely on him.”

<NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Lauren Houssin contributed reporting.