President Nicolas Sarkozy wasted no time in communicating his priorities for France as he formally took office yesterday from Jacques Chirac.
Energetic and impatient for change, he insisted in his inaugural speech that this is necessary if France is to succeed. Risks must be taken; work, effort, merit and respect newly embedded in French life; and in foreign policy climate change and human rights put centre-stage. Immediately he flew to Berlin to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel, telling her that the European Union must get out of its current institutional crisis. His crash programme for the next 100 days is designed to put these changes in the foreground of France's political agenda. An interim cabinet to be announced today or tomorrow may include several high-profile centrists and left-wingers.
This last would be a clever ruse. It is calculated to tip the opposition Socialists into even more disarray than is already the case as they argue about how to fight next month's legislative elections.
Mr Sarkozy badly needs to win them if he is to implement his programme smoothly and legitimately. After their defeat in the presidential election, the Socialists are sharply divided over their leadership and whether to embark on a fundamental change towards a more social democratic position. Mr Sarkozy has matched this manoeuvre with a shrewdly calculated initiative to talk through his proposals for changing the labour market with trade union leaders ahead of legislation this summer.
Yesterday represented not only a change of individuals but of generations and style. Mr Sarkozy differs from Mr Chirac on many policy issues and especially on the need to communicate them effectively. Having stressed the many things that are wrong with France - several of them typifying the Chirac era over the last 12 years - Mr Sarkozy promises a special session of the national assembly to pass a summer budget comprising €15 billion in tax cuts, including a 5 per cent drop in corporation tax linked to pledges by firms on jobs, investment and wages; to exempt overtime of tax and social security charges; to make interest on home loans tax deductible and to reduce inheritance tax for most French people.
He also plans to introduce a bill on minimum service in public sector monopolies like transport and negotiate the plan with unions, specify minimum sentences for repeat offenders and to reduce government to 15 large ministries, including one for immigration and national identity. In the autumn constitutional reform would give the assembly more power to control the executive.