Free Republic

  The new French president, François Hollande, said Saturday that he had told those close to him to keep their private lives private and to resolve their conflicts away from the news media. Mr. Hollande, who campaigned for France’s highest office on a pledge to be “a normal president,” has been embarrassed by the evident strain between his partner, Valérie Trierweiler, and his four children, whom he fathered with a former Socialist presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal. “Private affairs are resolved in private,” Mr. Hollande said in a 45-minute, nationally televised interview on the French national holiday Bastille Day. “And I have...

French police have raided the home and offices of the former president Nicolas Sarkozy as part of an investigation into allegations of illegal campaign-financing by France's wealthiest woman. Police searched the mansion rented by Carla Bruni in a chic gated community in the west of Paris early on Tuesday morning. She and Sarkozy have lived there since their marriage, in 2008. Detectives also searched the office of the legal firm where Sarkozy is a partner and the office he moved into after losing the presidential election to the Socialist François Hollande in May. The couple were not present as they...

Jew Hunting Season Open in France by Guy Millière June 19, 2012 at 4:30 am These organizations remain blindly silent : for them, Muslims are "victims of racism" and therefore cannot be racist. France is presently prey to one of the worst waves of anti-Semitism in its history ; this wave is not receding, rather, it is intensifying. According to the annual report published by the Protection Service of the Jewish community, 2011 was a bad year; 2012 will be worse. Since the killing of three children and a rabbi in the courtyard of a school in Toulouse on...

Nicolas Sarkozy "laughed uncontrollably" when told Dominique Strauss-Kahn had been caught partaking in an orgy with prostitutes but swore his aides to silence and went on to name him IMF head, a new book claims. Les Strauss-Kahn, written by Raphaëlle Bacqué and Ariane Chemin, journalists at Le Monde, provides fresh details about Mr Sarkozy’s knowledge of Mr Strauss-Kahn’s sexual practices, his proximity to the Socialist and decision to protect his reputation. Mr Sarkozy was interior minister late in 2006 – a few months before his election to the presidency – when Alain Gardère, the public security chief of Paris, told...

Nicolas Sarkozy is said to be "bored" after spending a three-week post-election break with his wife and children in Morocco in which he was constantly on the phone to politicians back in France, according to reports. Mr Sarkozy, his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and their daughter Giulia, returned to Paris on Saturday, where he was spotted jogging in the Bois de Boulogne, after unwinding at King Mohammed VI's expense in one of his luxury private residences in Marrakesh. The Right-winger intends to remain "durably discreet" after losing to Socialist François Hollande in his presidential re-election bid on May 6, one of...

  With the right-wing UMP party predicted to lose upcoming parliamentary elections, former interior minister Brice Hortefeux and other French conservatives are embracing recently departed president Nicolas Sarkozy. As conservative leaders in France contemplate a likely defeat in parliamentary elections in June, some among them have rallied around an unlikely figure: defeated former president Nicolas Sarkozy.  The Friends of Nicolas Sarkozy Association was formally established in Paris on Wednesday, fuelling ongoing speculation about the uncertain future of France’s political right. Sarkozy, who lost the May 6 presidential runoff to Socialist rival François Hollande, repeated before and after the vote that he...

François Hollande has been sworn in as president of France, becoming the first Socialist leader in 17 years to occupy the Elysee Palace. He named close aide Jean-Marc Ayrault as his PM. Mr Hollande is now to visit Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. Mr Hollande called for "a compromise" over the German-led focus on austerity as the way out of the eurozone crisis. Stock markets and the euro have fallen amid continuing political uncertainty in Greece. The handover of presidential power in France is a strange mixture of tradition and improvisation. There is tradition in the quasi-monarchical ceremonies, such as...

Francois Hollande was this morning sworn in as the new Socialist President of France - before getting drenched on an embarrassing open-topped drive up the Champs Elysee. The 57-year-old was inaugurated in a simple ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris, nine days after defeating the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy in a nationwide election. But it was during his 'triumphant' drive up France's most famous avenue that everything started to go wrong. As he poked his head out of the sunroof of a Citroen DS5, heavy rain started to pour, and there was no effort made to pull back the sunroof.

France's Hollande: Sarkozy underplayed budget woesAssociated Press – 8 hrs ago PARIS (AP) — French President-elect Francois Hollande suggested Friday that the government of outgoing leader Nicolas Sarkozy underestimated the country's budget problems and wants a new audit of France's books. But Hollande, a Socialist elected Sunday to lead the world's fifth-biggest economy, said that wouldn't hurt his ability to fulfill campaign pledges. Those include higher taxes on the rich, thousands of new teaching jobs and freezes on some government spending. And Hollande stuck to his own deficit reduction goals despite new European Union figures released Friday that paint a...

He  swapped her for a younger woman.  Then she tried to stop him becoming president of France. But Francois Hollande is on course to make former partner Segolene Royal the most powerful female politician in the country, despite the bitterness of their separation after 30 years and four children together.  President-elect Mr Hollande and fellow Socialist Miss Royal still have their personal differences and she does not get on with his current partner Valerie Trierweiler, a journalist 11 years her junior. Only last year, while Mr Hollande and his former partner were contesting the Socialist nomination for the presidency, Miss...

It turns out that left wingers really do believe in unicorns. Even in France. François Hollande has defeated Nicolas Sarkozy in the French Presidential election. Honestly, sometimes it's not easy to take the French people seriously. Hollande made a number of campaign promises, including Hollande wants to renegotiate a hard-won European treaty on budget cuts that Germany's Angela Merkel and Sarkozy had championed. He wants more government stimulus, and more government spending in general despite concerns from markets that France needs to urgently trim its huge debts. and Hollande’s win represents a groundshift in European politics; with a socialist president,...

Socialist candidate Francois Hollande has won the French election as expected. His high-tax, pro-stimulus, welfare-state-protection platform, in effect, scuttles the Eurozone rescue program engineered by Merkel and a reluctant Sarkozy. Hollande’s election leaves the European Union with three stark choices, none of which are good: 1) Germany and the European Central Bank cave and bail out any and all debtor countries under the cover of some fictitious future fiscal discipline, or 2) The Eurozone countries muddle along from one band-aid fix to the next as the bond vigilantes breathe down their necks while they hope to catch a break, or...

President Barack Obama invited French president-elect Francois Hollande to the White House later this month, expressing hope the pair would work "closely," a spokesman said Sunday. In a telephone call to congratulate Hollande on his election victory, Obama "indicated that he looks forward to working closely with Mr Hollande and his government on a range of shared economic and security challenges," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement. Obama and Hollande "each reaffirmed the important and enduring alliance between the people of the United States and France," the statement read.

France May Have Elected François Hollande, But She Really Needs A Napoleon Bonaparte By Tim Stanley May 6th, 2012 Hollande is the latest in a long line of French politicians to exploit the mob. It looks like Socialist François Hollande has won the French presidency. His platform: raise taxes on business to fund a lower retirement age and more spending. Things don’t look good for poor old France. Either Hollande will stick to his promises and ruin the economy or he’ll U-turn and reveal himself to be a reckless opportunist. Whether he's a fool or a knave, this election cycle...

Financial markets are braced for a radical shift in economic policy and fresh question marks over a eurozone break-up, as Francois Hollande moves into the Elysee Palace on Monday as the first Socialist president of France for 30 years. Mr Hollande's 'farewell to austerity' programme combines taxing the rich, raising public spending and lowering the retirement age. A confrontation between the new president and Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, is also high on the markets' worry list. However leading economists believe Mr Hollande will attempt a damage limitation exercise to avoid increasing turmoil in a eurozone facing further upheavals, with result...

The mainstream media will attempt to spin French President Nicholas Sarkozy's loss today to Socialist challenger François Hollande as a rejection of "austerity" policies--and to urge American voters to reject the deficit-cutting politics of the Tea Party when we go to the polls in November. In fact, there are important lessons from France--and they are the precise opposite of what the media is telling us. First, to call Sarkozy's policies "austerity" is to insult both austerity and socialism. The French government--like other European governments--sought to close its budget gap primarily by raising taxes, not by cutting the size and cost...

Fears of a Leftist lurch have been in the price for weeks. The CAC-40 index of French stocks has underperformed Germany’s DAX by 20pc since last August, an ominous divergence for two countries yoked so tightly together. The yield spread of German 10-year Bunds over French OAT bonds has jumped 90 basis points. It reflects a gut feeling in global markets that France is sliding into deep trouble, clinging to a ruinously expensive social model in a Teutonic monetary union and a Chinese trading world. French economists say the moment of danger will come later this summer - whoever is...

Francois Hollande defeated French President Nicolas Sarkozy as voters handed control of the second-biggest European economy to the Socialists for the first time in 17 years. Socialist Hollande’s simple solutions include: =Taxes *Impose a tax on financial transactions. *Impose a 75 percent income tax on earnings above 1 million euros ($1.32 million) and raise the rate to 45 percent for the income bracket between 150,000 euros and 1 million euros per year. *Repeal 29 billion euros of tax breaks over the next five years. *Increase total tax level to 46.9 percent in 2017 from 45.1 percent in 2012 (payroll and...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama has called France's new president-elect to congratulate him on winning Sunday's election. The White House says Obama told Hollande that he looks forward to working with him on a range of shared economic and security challenges.

French Socialist Francois Hollande appeared headed to victory over President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to exit polls of voters released by Swiss and Belgian news media. Those polls showed Hollande with 52 to 53 percent of the vote in an election that turned on solutions for Europe's economic crisis amid record unemployment in France. French voters were still headed to cast their ballots when the exit polls were released in the early evening _ the results of exit polls cannot be published in France until voting ends at 8 p.m., 2 p.m. Eastern _ but the outcome seemed all but certain.