France: François Hollande, leader of the socialist party, is being widely viewed as the victor at the party's 74th congress, which ended in Le Mans yesterday. In negotiations which lasted until 3.30 am, Mr Hollande engineered a "synthesis" between three competing motions.
Although his mainstream faction had won in advance, with almost 54 per cent of the vote in a pre-congress internal referendum, Mr Hollande was determined to reunite the fractured party.
For 15 months, since the former socialist prime minister Laurent Fabius announced that he intended to oppose the European constitutional treaty, the party has been deeply divided. The in-fighting was as much over the personal ambitions of up to nine socialist presidential candidates as it was about ideology. "The time of confrontation between socialists is over," Mr Hollande said in his 90-minute closing address in Le Mans. "I have no adversary within the party. It is against the right that we must move together."
However, like the socialist deputy Arnaud Montebourg, the only prominent socialist to reject the compromise, many French people doubt that the party's new unity will be "lasting, efficient or credible". Mr Montebourg wanted the socialists to commit themselves to moving France from the fifth to the sixth republic if they win presidential and legislative elections in 2007. Instead, the text adopted in Le Mans calls for a "new republic" in which the powers of the president and prime minister would be more balanced.
Mr Hollande will be re-elected first secretary of the party for the fourth time this week, a dramatic recovery from his failed advocacy of the European constitutional treaty - he scored only seventh out of nine potential socialist presidential candidates in a poll published by Le Monde last week.
Mr Hollande's companion, Ségolène Royal, the socialist deputy and president of the Poitou-Charentes region, with whom he has four children, scored highest in the poll, with 56 per cent of French voters and 68 per cent of left-wing sympathisers saying she would be a good candidate for the presidency.
Laurent Fabius, the man who divided the socialists over Europe, also gained a great deal in Le Mans. Last June 4th, he and six of his supporters were expelled from the party leadership for defying a decision to support the European constitution.
Some commentators said inviting him to Le Mans was like letting the wolf into the sheep pen. "We haven't forgotten, but we are turning the page," Mr Hollande commented.
Mr Fabius appealed for a "synthesis" in Le Mans and almost all of his demands found their way into the outline of a socialist programme for the 2007 legislative elections. The socialists yesterday committed themselves to repealing all reforms carried out by the right since 2002 regarding pensions, education and job security. They promised to re-nationalise the electricity company EDF, which is in the process of partial privatisation, and to stop mass dismissals of workers.
It was on Europe that Mr Fabius won most. "The socialist party takes note of the rejection of the constitutional treaty and respects the vote of May 29th," the text says. Mr Hollande supported the treaty; Mr Fabius opposed it. But Mr Hollande's speech yesterday could have been written by Mr Fabius. "The treaty is dead," Mr Hollande said. "The European Union has broken down. There is no constitution, no budget, no plan." The French right, Mr Hollande claimed, was "no longer in favour of European integration".
Right-wing parties all over Europe had "got what they wanted", Mr Hollande continued. "The market, and only the market . . . They threw themselves into endless enlargement so that Europe would lose its political dynamism."
The French socialists were in total agreement that "an economic government" for Europe was now the top priority, Mr Hollande said. The European Central Bank had to put full employment ahead of fighting inflation.
The 3,000 socialists who met in Le Mans were acutely aware that quarrels within the party risk destroying its future. The poll published by Le Monde in the run-up to the congress showed that the socialists are widely regarded as cut off from reality.
Sixty per cent of those polled said they do not think the socialists could win the 2007 presidential election; 59 per cent said that the party was doing a poor job as the main party of opposition.