Billed as an expression of "openness" to all the country's political forces, what does the composition of new French President Nicolas Sarkozy's government really mean, asks David Tresilian in Paris Following his convincing win in the French presidential elections some three weeks ago, the new centre-right French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week announced the appointment of a new government, replacing the previous, largely discredited team in which he himself had been minister of the interior. Former French president Jacque Chirac's last prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, was replaced by Sarkozy loyalist François Fillon, a former social security and education minister, with important portfolios going to Alain Juppé, Michele Alliot-Marie and Jean-Louis Borloo, all familiar figures on the right, in a slimmed-down cabinet of 16 ministers. Half the cabinet posts are now held by women, as had been promised before the elections in order to ensure "parity". The aim of the new government was to "carry out President Sarkozy's programme", Fillon said on his appointment last week. Sarkozy reportedly told the first meeting of the new cabinet last Friday that his aim was to introduce all the reforms that had been promised in his election manifesto "at once", including those that are likely to be the most controversial. While Fillon's appointment as prime minister had been widely predicted in the French press, the choice of Bernard Kouchner, junior health minister in the last socialist government, as minister of foreign affairs was a more surprising choice, not least owing to Kouchner's being ready to accept the post. His appointment, like that of several other leftist politicians as junior ministers, was billed as part of the new government's "openness" to all the country's political forces. However, despite such signs of openness key posts in the government are held by Sarkozy loyalists, who will be responsible for steering through the new government's most controversial legislation, including plans to chip away at the 35-hour week and at the rights of the unemployed, and to reduce the power of the French unions and taxes on the wealthy. Brice Hortefeux, a Sarkozy loyalist, was appointed as "minister of immigration, integration, national identity and co- development", a new post announced before the elections. He will have responsibility for reducing the rights of family members to join immigrants legally in France, and for exercising greater "selection" over immigrants allowed to come to the country in the first place. The appointment of Rachida Dati, a second-generation immigrant of Moroccan and Algerian extraction, as minister of justice has been widely commented upon. Dati, the first person from her background to hold a senior post in any French government and a Sarkozy spokesperson during the election campaign, will now have the task of getting plans to reduce the age of legal majority to 16 through parliament and of removing the right of judges to decide sentences for those found guilty of repeat offences. Irritated by allegations of "tokenism" surrounding her appointment and by carping at her previous role as advisor on France's troubled suburbs in which many French people of immigrant origin live, Dati said that this "was not a question of Arabs taking care of Arabs. More than anyone else, Nicolas [Sarkozy] represents the refusal to judge people by their social origins." With Sarkozy's new government in place, attention has now turned in France to the forthcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for 16 June. While the ruling centre-right UMP party has a comfortable majority in the present parliament, holding 365 seats out of a total of 577 to the Socialists' 141, this figure may well fall in the upcoming elections. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party's candidate in the presidential elections, came ahead of Sarkozy in many constituencies now held in parliament by the UMP, and France's left-wing parties are making efforts to do as well as possible in June's elections in a bid to prevent Sarkozy from enjoying "complete power". However, even with voting patterns reproducing those seen in the recent presidential elections, it is unlikely that the opposition parties will achieve a majority of the seats in the next French parliament. While the main lines of Sarkozy's domestic policy are relatively well-known, question marks still hang over what effect his election will have on French foreign policy, discussion of which was largely absent from the presidential election campaign. Sarkozy has declared his intention of negotiating a "simplified" version of the European constitution, rejected by French voters in a referendum in 2005 and put on ice since. His first act as president was a visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during which he declared that he intended to "get the European Union out of its state of paralysis". He has also made it plain that he opposes Turkish membership of the European Union, which may cause problems for France with the Commission in Brussels, since accession negotiations with Turkey are already officially underway. However, Sarkozy has said little about any wider reorientation of French foreign policy, particularly those aspects of it that characterised Chirac's presidency: the clash with the United States first over the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and then, in more minor key, over US support for last summer's Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Sarkozy is believed to be more of an "Atlanticist" in foreign policy than his predecessors, breaking with a long-standing tradition in France of keeping a distance from US actions abroad and often being critical of them. During the election campaign, Sarkozy said he wanted France to improve its relations with the US, and he is widely believed to have privately supported the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, his opponents even claiming that he had gone to Washington to "apologise" to President Bush for the French stand against it. While it is probably too early to tell what effect Sarkozy's election will have on French policy in the Middle East -- something that will become clear with the next regional crisis -- commentators predict that a France led by Sarkozy will be less likely than one led by Chirac to oppose US actions abroad, whether in Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, or elsewhere.
