[ccebook.cn]The World in 2010

hurry. This will disappoint those, including his own business friends, who thought they had elected a liberal
reformer. He will clash with European friends over running a high budget deficit. But he will try to make some
structural changes. The retirement age will be raised. Hospital charges will increase. A big administrative
reform will halve the number of elected departmental and regional representatives.
Sharm offensive
There will be further scattered unrest at the factory gate, yet France’s generous welfare provision will keep
spending buoyant and café trade brisk. The unions will find it harder than in the past to draw vast numbers
onto the streets. More unpredictable are the heavily Muslim, immigrant neighbourhoods, where drugs and
gangs create a toxic mix. On grounds of security, as well as secularism, the French may well go ahead and
ban the burqa, the face-covering Islamic garment, in public places.
Fifty years after France first granted its African colonies independence, Mr Sarkozy will celebrate “Africa Year”,
convening a grand France-Africa summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. But he will all the same shrink France’s military
presence in sub-Saharan Africa, and reorient it towards the Horn of Africa and the Gulf. More generally, Mr
Sarkozy will veer between Atlanticism and more Gaullist reflexes, as France marks the 70th anniversary of de
Gaulle’s London appeal for wartime resistance. He will push his ideas on financial regulation, climate change,
Iran and the Middle East. But relations with America will be pricklier than expected, partly because his
pretensions to big-power status irk Washington.
By the end of the year the chameleon-like Mr Sarkozy will face hard questions. His promises to get the French
to work more, and the state to do less, have gone untested during the recession. The more the economy
recovers, the fewer excuses Mr Sarkozy will have for not adopting the reformist agenda that got him elected.
Sophie Pedder: Paris bureau chief, The Economist
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
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