[...]
Sarkozy's aggressive response to Royal was in tune with the sentiment of French business, circles, which were unimpressed by her campaign pledges. What was particularly considered anathema was her promised social reforms. She judged them to be essential in attempting to win some popular support for her overall right-wing agenda, but the major corporations want a decisive end to the stalemate that has been produced by the resistance of the working class to the structural reforms repeatedly attempted by the Gaullists under Jacques Chirac.
SP economic spokesman Luc Besson [not the filmmaker???] even felt obliged to resign from the presidential campaign after being rebuked by Royal for putting a price on her social policies in the face of sustained criticism from the media. Royal intended to keep things suitably vague, but Besson had stated that her social programme would cost 35 billion euros.
This does not detract from the overall right-wing character of Royal's own programme. Indeed on every other front she must have calculated that she had given the French bourgeoisie what they were demanding of her.
In line with Sarkozy, she intends to bring together the employers and the trade unions to impose the cuts in rights and living standards necessary to make Europe's economy "the most competitive in the world." This is the essence of her "Republican Pact" (a term also used by Sarkozy).
Royal too expresses her implicit agreement with Sarkozy's neo-liberal economic project, declaring, "Europe must fight for an industrial policy following the example of the United States and the emerging nations."
She had neither mentioned nor pledged to repeal a raft of measures, many of them sponsored by Sarkozy, attacking democratic rights and freedoms, including enhanced police powers: two anti-terror laws massively increasing state surveillance of the population, the Equality of Opportunity Law, the Prevention of Delinquency Law, the suppression of labour protections, the State of Emergency Law. Clearly, she intends to keep them on the statute book.
[...]
full: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/roya-f19.shtml
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam