Newly-elected French President Francois Hollande is set to be sworn into office as the country's first socialist president since 1995, following a meeting with outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozy. The 57-year-old leader is to be inaugurated at the Elysee Palace on Tuesday before heading to Germany as his first foreign trip to hold a significant meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Hollande is to discuss Europe's economic stagnation with German officials and review Greece's worrying situation. Upon his departure, Hollande is expected to name Jean-Marc Ayrault, the head of the Socialists' parliamentary bloc, as his favored candidate for the position of prime minister. The socialist leader has promised to bring growth and prosperity back to his country. “Presidents are normally judged at the end of their terms, but a lot is going to depend on the beginning," Hollande told journalists on Monday. “We have some demanding weeks ahead of us." Being a critic of austerity policies, particularly European bailout pacts for troubled economies like Greece and Ireland, Hollande has an approach envisioned to fly in the face of Berlin's bailout measures in the eurozone. Meanwhile, despite a defeat in a regional election, Merkel has said that the vote would not affect “the work in Europe", reaffirming her tough stance on the European policy of austerity measures. On Sunday, Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) secured only over 26 percent of the votes in Germany's most populous state regional election in North Rhine-Westphalia, while the Social Democrats and the Greens, the main German opposition parties, won combined support of 51 percent. However, there are some assumptions that the victory for the Social Democrats and the Greens in Germany can help the German left to force Merkel to scale back on her austerity policies.
