Hollande’s victory, austerity’s defeat
Anna Sonny, 10 May 2012
By Anna Sonny
On May 6, the French elected Francois Hollande as their new President, only the second Socialist leader to succeed at the polls under France’s Fifth Republic. Promises of growth instead of austerity, combined with the ever-increasing unpopularity of Nicolas Sarkozy, gained Hollande 52.7% of the French vote.
Looking beyond French national politics, many will be curious to see how the dynamic of the EU’s Franco-German axis, previously embodied in the close partnership dubbed as “Merkozy”, will now shift as a result of Hollande’s election. German Chancellor Angela Merkel formally backed Sarkozy’s campaign and it was their unified determination that drove the tough austerity policies across Europe, spurring on spending cuts, rising unemployment rates and double-dip recessions in member states such as Britain and Portugal. With Merkel’s key ally now ousted and Hollande’s talk of renegotiating the EU fiscal treaty, it is unclear whether the two leaders will be able to reach a compromise between their polarized policies on finding a solution to the economic crisis.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that for the European public, austerity is too bitter an antidote for the EU’s ailing economy. In the Greek elections, held on the same day as the second round run-off in France, anti-austerity parties gained the biggest share of the vote, with New Democracy and Pasok, the parties that had agreed Greece’s most recent bailout deal, failing to win enough votes to form a coalition. With Greece’s government currently locked in a political impasse, the future of fiscal regulation in Europe looks uncertain.
Hollande’s push for growth in his policies is certainly an outright rejection of the current hard-line austerity rules; his policies include using the EU budget to initiate economic growth, for example through projects aimed at improving infrastructure across the continent, as well as creating euro-bonds. He also famously campaigned on renegotiating the EU fiscal treaty that was agreed by EU leaders last year. Hollande argued that this fiscal compact, which focuses on budgetary restraint for member states in an attempt to prevent any future debt crises, should also encourage growth and employment. However, Angela Merkel, well-known for her staunch support of strict fiscal discipline, insists that that there can be no renegotiation on the fiscal compact. There are difficult decisions to be made; Hollande’s victory could be the start of an entirely different Franco-German relationship with neither leader ready to back down.
A significant feature of the French elections was the success of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right party Front National, who won 17.9% of the vote in the first round. This is a significant increase compared to the 10.4% her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, gained back in 2007. Although Marine Le Pen worked hard to rebrand the party in her campaign, moving away from the racist and in particular anti-Semitic ideology propagated by her father, she is firmly opposed to the euro and continued with the party’s usual nationalist and anti-immigration rhetoric. The fact that she gained almost a fifth of the votes signals a certain malaise within French society concerning the EU and its values. This was echoed in the Greek elections, when the far-right party Golden Dawn managed to gain 21 seats in Parliament. The recent success of extreme right parties in a number of EU member states suggests not just a rejection of Europe’s financial policies but of the European Union itself. In the current economic climate, disenchantment with the EU is swelling and the extreme parties are creeping ever closer onto the political stage.
In a last-minute attempt to gather far-right voters before the second-round vote, Sarkozy delivered a starkly nationalist speech at a rally, claiming that he didn’t want to “let France dilute itself into globalization” and that “Europe has let the [idea of the] Nation weaken too much.” But Hollande’s victory shows that mainstream French voters are more concerned with the state of the economy than nationalism. Hollande certainly seems aware that his next movements will be under close scrutiny, declaring in his victory speech: “Europe is watching us, austerity can no longer be the only option.” It remains to be seen whether Hollande will succeed in changing the course of the increasingly unpopular wave of austerity measures and be able to influence growth in Europe.