• Exit Sarkozy, enter Hollande: Socialist sworn in as French president

    Laurent Cipriani / AP

    French President Francois Hollande waves from his car as he drives down the Champs Elysees in Paris after his inauguration on May 15, 2012.

    Christophe Ena / AFP - Getty Images

    French President-elect Francois Hollande arrives for his inauguration on May, 15, 2012 at the Elysee Palace in Paris.

    Reuters reports — Francois Hollande became French president on Tuesday in an official handover ceremony that makes him the country's first Socialist leader since Francois Mitterrand.

    Outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozy greeted Hollande on the steps of the Elysee presidential palace, and took him inside to transfer nuclear codes and other secret files ahead of a short swearing-in ceremony attended by around 400 guests.

    Hollande was due to fly to Berlin later in the day for his first meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

    'Monsieur Normal' takes office ... unmarried

    French economy stalls, posing challenge for new president

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    Fred Dufour / AFP - Getty Images

    Hollande is awarded "Grand Maitre" in the Order of the Legion of Honor, from chancellor of France's National Order of the Legion of Honor, General Jean-Louis Georgelin.

    Mehdi Fedouach / AFP - Getty Images

    Hollande, right, walks on the red carpet towards his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy prior to the start of the investiture ceremony.

    Lionel Bonaventure / AFP - Getty Images

    Sarkozy, left, welcomes his successor Hollande upon his arrival at the Elysee Palace.

    Jacques Brinon / AP

    Hollande's partner Valerie Trierweiler, right, shakes hands with Sarkozy's wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy before the presidential handover ceremony.

    Jacky Naegelen / Reuters

    Journalists work as a man sweeps the red carpet in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace.

    Patrick Kovarik / AFP - Getty Images

    Sarkozy and his wife leave the Elysee Palace after the formal investiture ceremony.

    Reuters

    Hollande stands up in his car as he rides in the rain up the Champs Elysees.

    The current First Lady of France, Valerie Trierweiler, and the former, Carla Bruni, have captivated the world. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.

     

     

  • France's 'Monsieur Normal' takes office ... unmarried

    The current First Lady of France, Valerie Trierweiler, and the former, Carla Bruni, have captivated the world. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News

    Updated at 09:55 a.m. ET Tuesday: Just as we were getting used to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Napoleonic style, rather large ears and twitchy manner, and his knock-out French-Italian wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s catwalk charm, breathless voice and bling, it’s out with the old and in with the new.

    On Tuesday, Francois Hollande, so bland a politician that he turned “Monsieur Normal” into a cool campaign moniker, was inaugurated as the ninth president since the larger-than-life Charles de Gaulle created the Fifth Republic in 1958. But He is the very first to assume France’s most powerful job… unmarried. 

    And unheard of. Even the Musketeer-like Sarkozy rushed to divorce his long-time spouse, Cecilia, and marry the celebrity Bruni just to do the honorable thing. But Hollande – a self-proclaimed social Democrat – will enter the Elysee Palace, not with a spouse at his side, but with a twice-divorced “partner”: Valerie Trierweiler, an elegant but take-no-prisoners reporter who, at 47, is 10 years younger than Hollande. They’ve been a couple since Hollande left his ex-PARTNER of some 30 years, Segolene Royale -- the French Socialist politician, former presidential candidate, and mother of his four grown children. (She, like Hollande, has never married.)  

    Louise Roug of Newsweek and the Daily Beast discusses whether there will be a fiscal revolution in France following Francois Hollande's victory in the country's recent presidential elections.

    Trierweiler, the next first lady -- or ‘Premiere Dame’ -- brings her own baggage into this unusual presidential relationship. Having worked all of her adult life to support her three boys, she says she has no intention of  “retiring” as first lady – a ceremonial, non-job in France with no bureau, staff or real budget – or of living off the state. 

    “I think she wants to remain herself,” said French author and political analyst Nicole Bacharan. ‘Which is already a challenge as a first lady. She wants to remain true to the kind of mother she is and professional woman she is.’’ 

    A challenge, that will be. When asked how the unmarried couple could pay state visits, for instance, to conservative Arab countries or the pope, Trierweiler dismissed the need for such travel and warned that she and Hollande would never marry under pressure “of protocol.” Now, such an attitude will no doubt shock some of the more straight-laced among us. But Bacharan believes the American public will by and large take to this smart, independent, working French mom with the chic neck scarves. She’s got what it takes to make her own mark, but in a very un-Bruni way. ‘’Trierweiler doesn’t seek celebrity. She doesn’t seek the limelight. She has fallen in love with this man who happens to be the president of France, but she wants to play a low, discreet role,” said Bacharan. 

     In this sense she should hit it off with the U.S. first lady, Michelle Obama, when the two are expected to meet at Camp David next week -- the French first couple’s first foreign visit. Both women are educated, articulate and independent, middle-class mothers who influence their "significant others" mostly from the sidelines, and in private. Trierweiler, a media professional for more than 20 years, has already improved Hollande’s image -- his slimmer looks, modern glasses and better-fitting suits all have her stamp of approval. "I think she’s very smart, very protective," said Chris Dickey, Newsweek’s Paris correspondent. "She not only asserts her influence -- she protects her influence of her partner.’’ 

    Lemouton Stephane / Abaca file

    Valerie Trierweiler

    Hollande’s comfortable defeat of the conservative Sarkozy -- as anticipated as it was -- has shaken Europe’s status quo. And his contentious tax-and-spend approach to growth and deficit reduction has triggered a hot debate on both sides of the pond. But it’s unclear how much -- if at all -- Trierweiler’s ideas have influenced Hollande’s leftist politics, or his economics. Refreshingly, their bond seems -- above all else -- to be emotional. "I didn’t choose to have a public life," she’s told a French magazine. "I chose Francois. But I will adapt." And who would’ve guessed that, behind Hollande’s gravely voice and charmless demeanor, there breathes ... a romantic? "It’s very rare to succeed professionally AND meet the woman of your life," Hollande confided to a French newspaper. "That chance is fleeting, but I chose to seize it!" 

    In fact, "Mr. and Ms. Normal" are anything but, even by French standards: an unmarried presidential couple with seven children, two ex-husbands and an ex-partner who happens to be an arch- rival, between them. But, let’s cut the new stars of the global political stage some slack. They are, after all, French -- for whom "doing it your way" is the 11th commandment. And when it comes to the French presidency --  a depository of dead war heroes, resistance leaders and monster egos -- an unassuming bureaucrat and his discreet -- if feisty -- partner, both with complicated personal lives, may fool us all and actually bring the "normalcy" that most French voters wanted.  Now wouldn’t THAT be abnormal?

     

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered France since the 1970s.

     

     

  • France's flashy, fiery Nicolas Sarkozy is ousted by unassuming Socialist

    A pledge from France's newly elected socialist president to tax and spend his way to economic growth prompted German Chancellor Angela Merkel to state she would not budge from Europe's austerity plan. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.

     

    By msnbc.com news services

    Updated at 7:54 a.m. ET: PARIS -- When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new.

    In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" — "I am the state — resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover. 

    His idea of change wasn't exactly what many French had in mind. 

    Sarkozy's meticulously built political career all but collapsed Sunday, after he lost to Francois Hollande, an unassuming and bespectacled Socialist, in France's presidential run-off. Sarkozy becomes the first French one-term president since Valery Giscard d'Estaing lost his re-election bid in 1981. 

    Top Talkers: The Morning Joe panel – including Time's Mark Halperin, the Huffington Post's Sam Stein and No Labels co-founder Mark McKinnon – discusses the French presidential elections, which resulted in Nicolas Sarkozy losing to socialist Francois Hollande. The Financial Times' Ed Luce also joins the discussion.


    Sarkozy's inauguration day jog, which conveyed youthful vigor, ultimately epitomized what many French came to see as jejeune, self-centered antics unbefitting of a president at a time when economic troubles and persistently high joblessness were on most minds. 

    "I take full responsibility for this defeat," he said after the results came out Sunday night. "My role cannot be the same again. My engagement in the public life of my country will be different from now on. I am preparing to become just one French citizen amongst many." 

    Sarkozy scored 48.4 percent of the vote, according to official data with most of the votes counted. 

    Meet Monsieur Caramel Pudding, France's next president

    Some political brethren grumbled that Sarkozy should have officially jumped into his re-election race earlier, instead of clinging to his mantle as head of state until February. Other pundits suggested that less controversial conservatives such as Prime Minister Francois Fillon or Foreign Minister Alain Juppe would have had a better shot at beating Hollande than Sarkozy did. 

    A frank-speaking, energetic and media-savvy former interior minister, Sarkozy won the presidency in 2007 over Segolene Royal — Hollande's former partner, and mother of his four children — with an unlikely campaign built on promises of "rupture" from the policies of Jacques Chirac, his fellow conservative and former mentor. 

    Franck Fife / AFP - Getty Images

    Socialist Francois Hollande and his partner Valerie Trierweiler wave to supporters early on Monday after ousting incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.


    It was personal style, many pollsters said, that largely did in Sarkozy. After his 2007 victory speech on Place de la Concorde, Sarkozy sped over to one of the ritziest restaurants on the Champs-Elysees to celebrate; then he jetted off to the yacht of a tycoon friend in the Mediterranean. Critics pounced on the showiness. 

    A lackluster economy and his inability to make good on his 2007 race promises to shrink persistently high joblessness didn't help. In the fourth quarter of 2011, France's unemployment rate was nearly 10 percent. In January, S&P downgraded France's state debt rating from its top tier, delivering a blow to his image as financial-manager-in-chief. 

    Sarkozy sought to cast himself as powerless: On the 2012 campaign trail, he repeatedly pointed to Europe's financial crisis — in places like Italy and Greece — that endangered the euro zone. He sought to cast himself as a "ship captain whose boat was in a full storm." 

    In many ways, Nicolas Sarkozy was an anomaly as France's president. 

    Off-the-cuff remarks
    He had a foreign-sounding surname. He didn't attend the most elite French university for public servants. He seemed to relish in chucking out the regal niceties of the presidency. His off-the-cuff remarks, like calling a somewhat belligerent passer-by at a Paris farm fair "a poor jerk," got him in trouble. 

    Sarkozy reportedly once said he'd foreseen himself more as a prime minister — whose job is the day-to-day running of the government, requiring a lot of energy — than head of state, who traditional role is about statecraft. 

    But backed by a strong majority of his conservative UMP party in the National Assembly, and by force of personality, Sarkozy commandeered the reins of power. His prime minister, Francois Fillon, was seen as his executor. 

    In his first year in office, Sarkozy's team rammed through changes like a cap on income taxes for the cut for the wealthiest, seen by critics as a sop to his uber-rich friends that backed his candidacy and were in his inner circle from his years as mayor of the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. 

    Francois Durand / Getty Images

    Nicolas Sarkozy arrives with his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy at a polling station in Paris, France, on Sunday. He becme the first French one-term president since Valery Giscard d'Estaing lost his re-election bid in 1981.

    Other reforms came hard, in the face of protest. 

    Fillon's team wrote into law minimum-service requirements during France's often-crippling labor strikes. It raised the retirement age to 62, from 60, in the face of protests. It pushed through complex reforms to cut costs in a creaky university system, and students protested in the streets by the thousands. 

    He reduced payroll taxes on overtime pay, and cut the bureaucracy by refusing to replace one of every two retiring state workers. 

    In the history books, Sarkozy's impact may well be more notable for what he accomplished abroad than at home: Under France's presidency of the European Union in 2008, he mediated between Russia and Georgia during their brief war; the following year, he replaced France in NATO's integrated command after a 43-year absence.

    Politically, he was a mix. 

    'Sarko the American'
    Sarkozy favors free markets, but has been unafraid to defend French business. He long took pride in his moniker as "Sarko the American" — and has rebuilt ties both with the United States and Israel. He led France into a leadership role in a NATO-backed revolution in Libya that toppled Moammar Gadhafi, and has taken a tough line on nuclear-minded Iran. Along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he helped craft a hard-won European fiscal treaty meant to stem the continent's debt crisis. 

    As interior minister, Sarkozy was generally successful as a crime-fighter. But his tough talk on youth in immigrant-heavy housing projects also often infuriated many French citizens whose families hail from former French colonies in north and sub-Saharan Africa. 

    Yet as interior minister, he helped create the country's largest confederation of Muslim groups, the CFCM, and supported a form of French-styled "affirmative action" — before he abandoned it under pressure in his conservative political camp which saw preferential treatment as against France's color-blind values. 

    Born on Jan. 28, 1955, Nicolas Paul Stephane Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa grew up in a middle-class home in Paris, the second of three sons born of a half-Jewish French mother and an aristocratic Hungarian emigre father who fled Communism after World War II. 

    Sarkozy is the first French president to divorce and remarry while in office. He is the father of three sons and, as of last year, a daughter with former supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, his third wife. 

    Slideshow: The faces of Carla Bruni

    From supermodel and musician to France's controversial first lady.

    Launch slideshow

    Before this election, Sarkozy said he'd quit politics if he lost. 

    "A new epoch is opening," he said Sunday night, saying he'd become a citizen "like you." He gave no specifics about his plans. 

    Sarkozy got a searing taste of defeat 13 years ago, after he headed a center-right list of candidates for European parliamentary elections, and the loss sent him into retreat from national politics. 

    "I recognize failure. I take full responsibility. I am ready to learn the consequences," he wrote in his 2001 book "Libre" ("Free") of that campaign in 1999, which he assumed leadership only six weeks before the vote. "And in the situation I find myself in this spring evening," he wrote, remembering the loss, "being, remaining, and being considered dignified is my only ambition." 

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • French presidential election should be a nail-biter

    Eric Feferberg / AP

    France's incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy strolls along the sea front after his last campaign meeting in Les Sables-d'Olonne, western France, Friday.

    By NBC's Jim Maceda

    Every reliable pollster in France is predicting a blowout. Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande will beat President Nicolas Sarkozy – a center-right conservative – by 5 to 6 percent.

    So, will this 2012 presidential election be a yawner? Neither candidate thinks so. On Friday – the final day of campaigning – both Sarkozy and Hollande zig-zagged across the country like a couple of bumble bees in a patch of fresh flowers.

    Every vote at every stop still seemed to count. At the end of the day, an exhausted Hollande spoke to reporters from his Paris headquarters, saying that he never underestimated his rival’s resilience or conviction. "Nicolas Sarkozy’s big mistake," he added, "was to underestimate my own."

    Sarkozy ended his election campaign –- which in his case only lasted a few months –- on live French TV.

    Sounding almost docile, Sarkozy asked politely for each viewers’ vote to prevent the "catastrophe" of an Hollande presidency.

    It was a far cry from the rotweiller who tried – and failed – at every turn to go for Hollande’s jugular during their one and only debate on Wednesday night.

    Nicolas Sarkozy and his socialist rival Francois Hollande debate ahead of Sunday's election.

    But even Sarkozy must be humbled by the Harry Truman-like challenge he faces: Pollsters say he needs to swing at least 1.5 million more voters his way to stand a chance.

    But his options are running out – the right-wing leader of the National Front, Marine le Pen, called on her millions of supporters to "vote with their conscience," but said she would cast a blank ballot.

    Then, Sarkozy’s last hope, the "centrist" Francois Bayrou, who won almost 10% of the vote in the first round, paid Sarkozy the ultimate insult. He announced he’d be voting for the left-wing Hollande.

    Meet Monsieur Caramel Pudding, likely French president

    Lionel Cironneau / AP

    French Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande speaks during a meeting in Perigueux, Southwestern France, Friday.

    Still, political analysts here like to remind me that French presidential elections, in a nation split pretty much in half politically, always go down to the wire.

    French polls are notoriously wrong. And while his campaign team has turned it into a positive, we mustn’t forget that Hollande’s main attraction has been his very unemotional blandness.

    He’s nicknamed "Flanby," after a popular soft-and-squishy cream pudding, a staple for French families.

    Sarkozy fails to floor Hollande in France election television debate

    Now that may be reassuring for many French who’ve had to endure five years of the mercurial, often explosive, Sarkozy, but are some having second thoughts?

    "Hollande is not a swashbuckling, excited and excitable crisis manager, which is Sarkozy’s hallmark," said French analyst Francois Heisbourg. "And we don’t know actually how Hollande will react under stress. He hasn’t been in a position where he’s had to deal with a major international or national crisis. There is an element of the unknown.’’

    Another unknown for many economists here is just how Hollande intends to untie this Gordion Knot: How, as he’s pledged, will be create 60,000 new teachers’ jobs, lower the retirement age from 62 back to 60, stimulate growth AND cut the deficit to zero by 2017 (the end of his presumed term)?

    Other world leaders have attempted much less, and failed.

    'A turning point'
    International markets are watching, and wondering too, on a knife’s edge. "France is at a turning point,’’ said Heisbourg.

    Hollande will either get the Euro-zone deal he needs from Germany’s Angela Merkel, the green light to stimulate growth in France, or France is in for years of instability. "And remember,’’ he warned, "if things go badly in France, that has twice the impact on America than if things go wrong in China.’’

    Hollande, a wonk of the first order, can rattle off the inner workings of his economic plan - without notes – and with great conviction.

    But Sarkozy – and many others – say it’s a fantasy.

    "You’re simply spending more, taxing more, and creating more debt,’’ Sarkozy retorted at their debate. "And there isn’t a single country that would adopt your ideas for growth!’’

    Still, Sarkozy’s chances look slim.

    It’s perhaps why, on his website and on the final day of the campaign, a video appeared that seemed to stretch the truth.

    It stated that many world leaders "respect and support" the French President, including Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and … U.S. President Barack Obama.

    Hollande, reportedly, saw red. His team sent a barrage of phone calls to the U.S. Embassy, asking since when had Obama officially endorsed Sarkozy? Under pressure, an embassy spokesman released a statement, saying "The U.S. government does not support any candidate.’’

    Sarkozy – desperate – is playing to his strengths – his flashy character, his tried and tested leadership, his palsy relations with European and U.S. leaders, his ego. But it’s an indication of just how fed up the French are with Sarkozy’s presidency that, despite all his flaws, Hollande - the ruddy faced bureaucrat who in a 30-year political career has never held even a minor cabinet post - is poised to become France’s first Socialist president in a generation.

    Or is he? Don’t count Sarkozy out. A yawner? Maybe on paper. But come Sunday, this’ll be a nail-biter.

    Jim Maceda, an NBC news foreign correspondent based in London, has covered French presidential elections since the 1970s.

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  • France's election battle moves from hearts to heads

    Alain Jocard / AFP - Getty Images, file

    Communist-backed hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who polls showed at one stage challenging far-right candidate Marine Le Pen for third place, finished the weekend's elections in fourth with 11.1 percent of the vote.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News

    LONDON – My daughter Juliette is thirty-something, a former executive assistant to a top CEO, a mother of two and expecting her third child. Her husband, Nader, is a designer and engineer of energy systems. They are upwardly mobile, and they are both French, living in Paris.

    While they hardly see themselves as radicals, they did something Sunday that even surprised them: They voted for Jean-Luc Melenchon – the fiery former Trotskyist backed by the Communists – in the first round of the French presidential elections.

    I wasn’t too surprised. Both Juliette and Nader are articulate, independent adults who, like many French people, often vote with their hearts in the first round of balloting, and then with their heads, or wallets, in the key run-off two weeks later.

    But why Melenchon? Was this just a creative way to let off steam? A protest vote?

    "Well, it’s true, we were probably voting with our hormones this time around," Juliette admitted. "But people are so fed up with [President Nicolas] Sarkozy, it wasn’t like our votes weren’t well thought out.’"

    Kenzo Tribouillard / AFP - Getty Images

    France's incumbent president and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) candidate Nicolas Sarkozy shakes hands with supporters as he leaves his party's campaign headquarters in Paris after a political committee on Monday.

    Waking up Monday morning, she and Nader were trying – much like the rest of the nation – to sort out their mixed feelings about what had happened.

    Sarkozy, Hollande advance in French vote; far right's Le Pen gets 20 percent

    Most of all, they said they were "shocked" by the record near-20 percent of the vote garnered by Marine Le Pen, the extreme-right National Front candidate who ran on a platform of cracking down on immigrants and beefing up France’s borders.

    Nader, a French-Arab whose parents immigrated to France from Tunisia and Yemen in the 1960s, is only too aware of the tinderbox such a policy would set off within the French Muslim community.

    At the same time, they were "pleased" that Socialist candidate Francois Hollande won the first round – with a modest 29 percent of the vote – and believe he’ll be the next French President.  They were also surprised Sarkozy did so well – less than 2 percent behind Hollande – and that "the trickster" might still find a way to pull a rabbit out of his hat.

    Benoit Tessier / Reuters

    Francois Hollande, Socialist Party candidate for the 2012 French presidential election, waves to supporters as he walks in the street during a campaign visit in Quimper on Monday.

    His most likely rabbit is an appeal to Le Pen’s right-wing constituents. On Monday, Sarkozy was out stumping, wooing Le Pen voters with a pledge to get tough on immigration and security. The irony that Sarkozy’s relatives immigrated from Hungary and Greece during the chaos of the early 20th century seemed to be lost on no one except Sarkozy himself.

    But Hollande’s political tap dance over the next two weeks may be even trickier than Sarkozy’s, as Hollande needs to win over not only French voters such as Juliette and Nader, who went for Melenchon in the first round, but also a significant number of "centrists," many of whom believe that Hollande is just window-dressing for France’s old diehard Communists.

    In other words, Hollande will have to prove to the left that he’s strong enough to defy Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel and the other Eurozone rulers with promises of stimulating the French economy, but not alienate his center with too much talk of tax and spend.

    Impossible? That’s what Sarkozy’s camp – and many economists – are saying.

    Certainly, the international financial markets are worried about the prospect of a Hollande presidency on Monday. The euro fell 1 percent, U.K. blue chips dropped 2 percent, while the Dow-Jones industrial average plummeted more than150 points at the starting bell and was down all day.

    4-month presidential campaign with no television ads? Welcome to France

    But there’s no great belief, even among his supporters, that Sarkozy can bring anything new to the table to solve France’s two key problems: stalled growth and high unemployment.

    While he talks about austerity and reforms, he hasn’t had the courage to impose either on an electorate who still deeply believe that the French model of a government-subsidized "worker’s paradise" is the best on Earth, and mustn’t be tampered with.

    So forget about the polls. The real campaign has just begun. This French presidential election – like so many before it – is now shaping up to be a photo finish between the Left and the Right, and whose voodoo can bridge the two sides.

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  • Sarkozy, Hollande advance in French vote; far right's Le Pen gets 20 percent

    As Rock Center Special Correspondent Ted Koppel reports, the electoral system is very different in France, where the candidates disappear from TV in the run-up to voting.

    By Reuters

    Far-rightist Marine Le Pen threw France's presidential race wide open on Sunday by scoring nearly 20 percent in the first round -- votes that might determine the runoff between Socialist favorite Francois Hollande and conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.

    Hollande got 27.5 percent, compared to Sarkozy's 26.6 percent, and the two will meet in a head-to-head decider on May 6.

    But Le Pen's record score of 20 percent was the sensation of the night, beating her father's 2002 result and outpolling hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, in fourth place with 10 percent. Centrist Francois Bayrou finished fifth with nine percent.

    Le Pen, who took over the anti-immigration National Front in early 2011, wants jobs reserved for French nationals at a time when jobless claims are at a 12-year high. She also advocates abandoning the euro currency and restoring monetary policy to Paris.

    Her score reflected a surge in anti-establishment populist parties in many euro zone countries from Amsterdam to Athens as austerity and the debt crisis bite.

    Voter surveys show about half of her supporters would back Sarkozy in a second round and perhaps one fifth would vote for Hollande, making her a potential kingmaker in the runoff.

    Jean-Marie Le Pen's 16.9 percent score in the 2002 first round caused a political earthquake, knocking then Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin out of the runoff and forcing left-wing voters to rally behind conservative Jacques Chirac.

    Sarkozy, 57, has painted himself as the safest pair of hands to lead France and the euro zone in turbulent times, but Sunday's vote appeared to be a strong rejection of his flashy style as well as his economic record.

    If Hollande wins on May 6, joining a small minority of left-wing governments in Europe, he has promised to lead a push for a bigger focus on growth in the euro zone, mainly by adding pro-growth clauses to a European budget discipline treaty.

    The prospect of a renegotiation of the pact is causing some concern in financial markets, as is Hollande's focus on tax rises over austerity at a time when sluggish growth is threatening France's ability to meet deficit-cutting goals.

    France's sickly growth, along with its stubbornly high unemployment, are major factors hampering Sarkozy's battle to win a second term, despite an energetic campaign against the blander but more popular Hollande.

    Sarkozy would be the 11th euro zone leader to be swept out since the start of the bloc's debt crisis in late 2009 and the first French president to lose a re-election bid in more than 30 years. A deep dislike of a manner many see as arrogant and too informal has also driven many people to vote against him.

    "France needs a radical change of direction, mainly on the economy," said Jean-Noel Harvet, a public sector worker voting earlier on Sunday in the northern town of Cambrai.

    Hollande, 57, promises less drastic spending cuts than Sarkozy proposed and wants higher taxes on the wealthy to fund state-aided job creation, in particular a 75 percent upper tax rate on income above 1 million euros ($1.32 million).

    He would be only France's second left-wing leader since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, and its first since Francois Mitterrand, who beat incumbent Valery Giscard-d'Estaing in 1981 and ruled until 1995.

    Hollande had called on his supporters to take nothing for granted, mindful of the fiasco for the left in 2002 when record abstention saw the Socialist Jospin pushed out in the first round by the elder Le Pen.

    Turnout ended up at a healthy 70.6 percent three hours before polls closed, just below 73.9 percent recorded in the 2007, which was the highest in two decades.

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  • 4-month presidential campaign with no television ads? Welcome to France

    By Becky Bratu
    msnbc.com

    While American presidential campaigns seem to last for years, the French campaign only lasts a few months from start to finish.

    The differences between the two systems are significant. In France, candidates’ personal lives are not scrutinized to the degree that U.S. presidential hopefuls’ are and their time on radio or television is very closely monitored by a government agency. Ten staffers record and count every single minute that any one of the 10 presidential candidates is on air to ensure that every candidate receives equal time.

    In France, there are no political television commercials. The only mass exposure for candidates is on network news and public affairs programs.

    “In the morning, for example, which is our primetime, the biggest candidates will be more exposed,” Radio France Inter news director Jacques Monin told Rock Center Special Correspondent Ted Koppel in an interview scheduled to air Wednesday night on Rock Center.

    “But we have to give this equal access to the candidates. So, we can find, we have to find other times, which can be in the afternoon, in the evening, in the night as well.”

    Between April 9 and April 22, however, as the first round approaches, inspectors count not only the number of minutes, but the placement of an appearance during the broadcast day, which has to be the same for all 10 candidates.

    ”It is therefore very hard to strike the right balance,” Christine Kelly, the director of the agency in charge of counting, told Koppel. “The media therefore do unfortunately cancel a certain number of political broadcasts.”

    REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

    Official campaign posters for French President and UMP political party candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande, for the 2012 French presidential election, are displayed on a wall in Paris April 16, 2012.

    With less than a week until France casts its votes in the first round, three opinion polls showed President Nicolas Sarkozy’s narrow lead over his chief rival, Socialist Francois Hollande, is steady or shrinking, and the incumbent is still expected to lose the subsequent May 6 runoff.

    "He’s been trailing Hollande in the second round pretty consistently," Justin Vaïsse, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told msnbc.com. "It’s hard to see where the reservoir of votes would come from to make him win."

    While Sarkozy, a conservative, is seen as unpopular, Hollande – who was once nicknamed Mr. Jell-O by Socialist leader Arnaud Montebourg -- owes his candidacy to former International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He was the favorite to lead the Socialists to victory in France until a 32-year-old maid at a New York hotel alleged that he had sexually assaulted her after she entered his suite. More recently, Strauss-Kahn has been under investigation for his involvement in an organized prostitution ring.

    Even in a sexually tolerant country such as France, that was too much.

    “It was extreme. It was perceived as sickness,” French political scientist Dominique Moisi told Koppel.

    Hollande’s private life, however, has not come under fire. The man who might become France's next president is living with a journalist he is not married to. He also had a relationship spanning decades with 2007 Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, with whom he had four children out of wedlock.

    Another notable difference between the United States and France is voter turnout. In France, where an estimated 70 percent of eligible voters will take part in the election, the electorate is considered apathetic. A 60 percent turnout in the United States, however, is perceived as high.

    Can the 'Toulouse effect' save Sarkozy from defeat in France?

    While Sarkozy and Hollande are stealing most of the spotlight in the media, polls indicated far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen had strengthened her position in third place, ahead of hard left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in fourth.

    “For me, the National Front is rebel. It’s punk,” a supporter who calls himself Archibold and produces political Web videos aimed at young people, told Koppel. “We’re not mainstream at all.” Archibold said he chooses to remain anonymous because some employers would not approve of far-right allegiances.

    Meanwhile, Sarkozy’s campaign is relying on some techniques borrowed from across the Atlantic, such as frequent appearances by the current president’s glamorous wife Carla Bruni and American-style political rallies.

    Thanks to U.S.-educated campaign directors, the Hollande campaign is getting the American treatment, too.

    “We’ve been advocating for, you know, more America in the French election for two years,” Guillaume, one of Hollande’s campaign directors, told Koppel. “We’ve been pushing this, you know, ‘let’s do what Obama did’ for two years.”

    As part of that new approach, Hollande’s campaign is also launching a door-to-door campaign. The approach appears to be working.

    Sarkozy saw his lead for the first ballot slip to half a percentage point from two points about a week ago in a poll by Ipsos Logica, with 29 percent support to Hollande's 28.5 percent. 

    The same poll showed Hollande retaining a 10-point lead in voting intentions for the May 6 runoff with 55 percent to Sarkozy's 45 percent, unchanged from a week earlier.

    While the race for re-election is an uphill battle for Sarkozy, there remains a small possibility he can scrape his way to a second term in office if he wins in the first round and picks up some support from the centrist candidate's electorate, Vaïsse said.

    "Frankly, apart from that scenario, it’s hard to see how he’ll be able to make it," he added.

    Editor’s note: Click here to watch Ted Koppel’s full report that aired April 18 on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams. Reuters contributed to this report.

     

     

  • Will France stomach a non-cheese-eating Nicolas Sarkozy as president?

    Yoan Valat / Pool via Reuters

    President Nicolas Sarkozy visits a cheese factory in Vallieres in the French Alps on Feb. 16.

    By Ian Johnston, msnbc.com

    It’s a matter of (spurious) debate if France’s president is a “surrender monkey,” but one thing seems clear: He is no longer cheese-eating.

    Nicolas Sarkozy decided to stop savoring "le fromage" after meals, the AFP reported in an article on the kitchens at the presidential Elysee Palace. His chef said Sarkozy was trying to eat healthily, preferring "light, balanced meals and poultry to red meat," AFP added.

    The term “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” was first used on "The Simpsons" and was popularized by National Review journalist Jonah Goldberg, who claimed he had made it “an accepted term in official diplomatic channels around the globe.”

    Most French people would surely object to the idea of being “surrender monkeys,” but they would likely embrace the term “cheese-eating” wholeheartedly.

    National pride
    The variety and flavor of cheeses to be found across France is a matter of national and regional pride, a subject that can fire considerable passion.

    As the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper noted, Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French forces during the Second World War and later president, once declared, “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?”

    It remains to be seen if a non-cheese-eating leader is acceptable to the French electorate, who will decide whether Sarkozy remains in the Elysee in presidential elections in just three weeks’ time.

    It's been a tough reelection fight for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been trailing in the polls, but the recent Toulouse terror attacks and Sarkozy's sharp swing to the right have given him at least a temporary boost. ITV's James Mates reports.

    Presidential chef Bernard Vaussion, who has cooked for five French presidents, may have made an inadvertent intervention into the world of politics by declaring that cheese was “too much” for Sarkozy, as reported by the Telegraph’s Paris correspondent Henry Samuel.

    Samuel also noted Sarkozy had caused a minor diplomatic incident in October last year when he remarked to another European leader that German Chancellor Angela Merkel “says she is on a diet and then helps herself to a second helping of cheese.”

    An anti-cheese French president? Quelle horreur!

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  • France arrests 10 more Islamist suspects in early-morning raids

    Gerard Julien / AFP - Getty Images

    Members of the French National Police Intervention Group (GIPN) arrest a suspected member of a radical Islamist group in Marseille, Wednesday.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    PARIS -- Elite police arrested 10 suspected Islamists in early-morning raids across France on Wednesday in a clampdown ordered by President Nicolas Sarkozy after seven people were killed by an al-Qaida-inspired gunman last month.

    The DCRI domestic intelligence service, supported by elite police commandos, carried out arrests in the southern cities of Marseille and Valence, two towns in the southwest and in the northeastern town of Roubaix, a police source said.

    The raids follow the arrest of 19 people on March 30, a week after police snipers shot dead gunman Mohamed Merah, who killed three Jewish school children, a rabbi and three soldiers in a spate of attacks around Toulouse.

    "Those arrested have a similar profile to Mohamed Merah," a local police source said. "They are isolated individuals, who are self-radicalized."

    Story: Sarkozy: Toulouse shootings caused 9/11-like trauma; 19 Islamist suspects arrested

    He said the suspects were tracked on Islamist forums expressing extreme views and said they were preparing to travel to areas including Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Sahel belt to wage jihad (holy war).

    Some of those arrested had already been and returned to France, the source said.

    Sarkozy re-election bid
    Sarkozy, who is facing an uphill task to be re-elected president in an April-May vote, has vowed to root out any form of militancy following Merah's killing spree.

    Thirteen of the 19 people arrested last Friday are alleged to have links to radical French Islamist group Forsane Alizza. They are being investigated on suspicion of terrorism, the Paris public prosecutor said on Tuesday.

    Wednesday's raids were not linked to either those arrests or the Merah attacks, the source said.

    Story: Father of Toulouse gunman wants to sue France for killing son

    The BBC reported that security has become a major issue in the election campaign, as Mr Sarkozy battles to overcome his main rival, Francois Hollande two-and-a-half weeks before the April 22 first-round vote.

    Sarkozy, a former interior minister, has been accused by some opponents of capitalizing on the Islamist threat for electoral purposes even though only 20 percent of voters consider it their main concern, surveys show.

    Speaking on RTL radio, Hollande, who is leading Sarkozy in polls, declined to be drawn on whether he thought the raids were politically driven.

    "If there are suspicions and risks, then they must be acted upon," Hollande said. "But why do it after a terrorist act? I am not questioning what is being done, but we could have done more before," he said.

    Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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  • Father of Toulouse gunman wants to sue France for killing son

    France 2 via AP

    A photo taken from video and provided by TV station France 2 shows Mohamed Merah.

    By msnbc.com staff

    The father of Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah told FRANCE 24 that he wants to sue the French state for failing to capture his son alive.

    Benanel Merah told the French television on Tuesday that police besieging his son’s Toulouse flat were "hasty" and they “could have used sleep-inducing gas and taken him like a baby.”

    Merah hired Algiers-based lawyer Zahia Mokhtari, according to the BBC. Mokhtari told French media that Merah considered his son murdered by security services.

    Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, killed three Jewish children and a rabbi and three Muslim soldiers in southwestern France before he was shot by police commandos from the elite RAID unit after a 32-hour standoff in a suburban Toulouse apartment.

    Merah's plan to take the French state to court has drawn criticism from French politicians, BBC reported.

    "If I were the father of such a monster, I would shut my mouth in shame," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Tuesday, according to the BBC.

    FRANCE 24 reported that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s chief adviser, Henri Guaino, told France Culture radio that while the man was “perfectly within his rights” to start legal proceedings, it would be “indecent."

    “A little bit of decency right now would do everyone a lot of good," Guaino added. "To try to blame the state is the height of indecency. This monster killed in cold blood. French society owes him absolutely nothing.”

    According to FRANCE 24, Merah left his family when Mohamed was 6 years old. His other son, Abdelkader, was placed under investigation for suspected complicity in the killing spree.

    Mohamed's half-brother in Algeria, Rachid Merah, said his brother did not have any ties to al-Qaida, the BBC reported.

    "I deny that formally, and I have doubts that he had any link with al-Qaida or Taliban or any terrorist organization in the world. And the fact that proves it is that France killed him before he could speak in a trial, while they could get him alive," Rachid Merah said.

    Algerian authorities have not formally granted the Merah family's request to bury Mohamed in Algeria.

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  • Sarkozy: Some Muslim clerics 'not welcome on French soil'

    Pool / REUTERS

    Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, has banned Muslim clerics from entering the country. Many view his position as a political response to the fatal shootings by a Frenchman with ties to al-Qaida last week.

    By msnbc.com staff

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday he would bar a group of clerics from traveling to France for an Islamic conference next month, the French news organization Liberation.fr reported.

    "I have clearly indicated that there are certain people who have been invited to this congress who are not welcome on French soil," Sarkozy told France Info radio.

    Sarkozy’s announcement has been viewed as a political response to the murders in Toulouse, The New York Times reported, when Mohammed Merah, a young Frenchman with alleged ties to al-Qaida, fatally shot a young rabbi, three Jewish children at a school in southern France and three paratroopers. Since the killings, the president has also said he wants to punish people for repeatedly viewing extremist Islamic websites and for traveling abroad for terrorist training.

    French shooting victims shot at close range

    Among those who may not enter the country is Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi, a prominent Egyptian cleric who lives in exile in Qatar. Sarkozy had to appeal directly to the Qatari government to prevent the 86-year-old cleric from entering, since he has a diplomatic visa. Al-Qaradawi was also banned from visiting England in 2008.

    Suhaib Salem / Reuters

    Egyptian cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi spoke to 200,000 demonstrators in Egypt following the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

    Al-Qaradawi is a household name in the Arab world, known for being a prominent Sunni scholar and television personality on Al Jazeera. He is also a man of contradictions, one who has criticized Arab governments for their lack of democracy and who has urged demonstrators in Egypt's Tahrir Square to “guard your revolution,” the Times reported.

    He triggered outrage when he defended Palestinian suicide bombers and surprise when he railed against the 9/11 terrorism attacks, the Guardian reported in 2005.

    "The difference is huge,” al-Qaradawi told the Guardian. “What happens in Palestine is self-defense. But in 9/11 they were not fighting an invasion; they didn't just use their own bodies but those of all the others in the planes. These young men attacked non combatants – even other Muslims and Arabs - going about their daily lives.”

    The International Union of Muslim Scholars, which al-Qaradawi leads, is holding the April 6 conference. They said they would respect Sarkozy’s request.

    But Sheik Ali al-Qaradaghi told the Agence France-Presse that al-Qaradawi is a “moderate scholar who contributed to combating extremism in Islamic thought” and who vehemently opposed the shootings in Toulouse.

    France has worked with the cleric before; the Times reported that Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister, traveled to Qatar for the cleric’s help in releasing French journalists kidnapped in Iraq. They were released, and Douste-Blazy thanked the cleric profusely. 

    Sarkozy, who is running for re-election, is trailing slightly behind Socialist candidate François Hollande in the latest opinion polls.

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  • French presidential race irrevocably altered by Toulouse killings

    Jean-paul Pelissier / Reuters

    A masked special unit policeman looks out of one of the ground floor windows of the apartment where gunman Mohamed Merah had been holed up, in Toulouse, France on March 23, 2012. Merah died in a hail of bullets on Thursday as he scrambled out of a ground-floor window during a gunbattle with elite police commandos.

    Eric Feferberg / AFP - Getty Images

    France's incumbent President and UMP candidate for the 2012 presidential election Nicolas Sarkozy delivers a speech in Strasbourg on March 22, 2012.

    As police investigators continue to search the apartment in Toulouse where a 30-hour siege ended in a cacophony of gunfire on Thursday, attention is turning to the effect events of the past two weeks will have on French politics.

    France's presidential election race has resumed irrevocably altered by the killing of Mohamed Merah, an al Qaeda-inspired gunman whose murders have shifted the political debate in favor of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. 

    The young self-styled Islamist's crimes spread fear, triggered an emotive debate about immigration and integration, and gave Sarkozy a small bounce in the polls as he sought to close the gap behind Socialist rival Francois Hollande.

    With only one month left to go before the first round of the election, Merah's influence is likely to endure.

    "Of course what has happened in the past week has changed the course of events," a senior Sarkozy campaign adviser said on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    "There wasn't much talk about security and terrorism before. But this is going to raise questions about our system of integration, our approach to fundamentalism and our tolerance of certain practices here. You're going to hear a lot about that in the weeks to come," he said. Continue reading.

    -- Reuters contributed to this post

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