French Vote Frontrunner Hollande Pledges to

Fight Finance
Helene Fouquet
Jan 23, 2012

Socialist Party frontrunner and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s main opponent in France’s
presidential election, Francois Hollande told a crowd of more than 10,000 supporters
during his first campaign rally yesterday, “Let me tell you who my rival is. It does not
bear a name or have a face, it’s the finance industry.”

Pierre Moscovici, campaign director for French Socialist Francois Hollande, discusses
the presidential candidate's plans for cutting the budget deficit and proposals from
Nicolas Sarkozy to increase value-added tax. He speaks with Bloomberg's Caroline
Connan in Paris. (Source: Bloomberg)

Francois Hollande, the Socialist Party frontrunner and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s
main opponent in France’s presidential election, promised to combat the financial
sector and restore equality if voted into office May.

“Let me tell you who my rival is. It does not bear a name or have a face, it’s the
finance industry,” Hollande told a crowd of more than 10,000 supporters during his
first campaign rally yesterday. “In the past 20 years, the financial industry has taken
control of our societies, of our lives and threatens our states,” he said in the northern
suburbs of Paris.

Exactly 90 days before the first round of voting, 57-year- old Hollande presented for
the first time proposals including a tax on financial transactions and splitting retail and
investment banks. The lawmaker and former Socialist Party chief said new rules to
control the financial sector would be implemented in the first weeks of his
administration.

“His stance against the financial sector is intense, but realistic because he’s adopted
measures that already have been proposed or existed, like the U.S. Glass-Steagall
Act,” said Nicolas Tenzer, the director of CERAP, a political think-tank in Paris. “This
was a nod to the left-wing of his party and also an electorate that doesn’t want to
bow to the financial elite.”

An opinion poll released Jan. 21 showed Hollande with a 14- point a lead over
Sarkozy. The president, who has yet to declare his intention to run, would lose by 57
percent to 43 percent against the Socialist challenger if the two faced-off in the
second round of the elections on May 6, according to the BVA poll. The poll of 974
people was carried out from Jan. 18 to 19 and didn’t provide a margin of error.

May 6

France hasn’t had a Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand’s second term ended
in 1995.

The first round of voting will be held on April 22 with the top two candidates
competing in the decisive contest on May 6. Legislative elections will follow in June.

In advance of a Jan. 26 press conference where he will make a full presentation of his
platform, Hollande yesterday outlined proposals such as banning stock-options, the
regulation of bonuses and a rule to prevent French banks from operating in tax
havens. He also called for the creation of a public European credit-rating company.

“There is no reason for the markets to worry about yesterday’s speech,” said
Dominique Barbet, an economist at BNP Paribas (BNP) in Paris, said in an interview.
On macro-economic matters, “there’s a quasi-consensus in the centre of the political
spectrum, from Sarkozy to Hollande. The extremes are different, but they have no
chance of gaining power.”

‘Naïve’

Philippe Mills, the head of Agence France Tresor, the French debt-management body,
said in an interview in Le Figaro that market analysts view the main candidates as
having “clear commitments” to cut deficits and managing public money.

Finance Minister Francois Baroin critized Hollande’s stance on financial markets.

“Saying you are against finance is like saying ‘I’m against rain and fog,’” he said
yesterday on RTL radio yesterday. “I don’t know of an economy without banks and
finance. What we have done is impose a certain number of rules. To say finance is the
enemy is naive,” Baroin said.

In his speech Hollande also said he would overhaul the tax system, create a public
bank to support industry, maintain the 35-hour workweek, increase funding for
culture and cut the share of nuclear power in France’s energy supply to 50 percent in
2025 from about 75 percent today.

He pledged to cap ”excessive” prices for fuel, rents and doctors fees. He said he would
initiate a housing program and hire of 60,000 new school workers.

Afghanistan Exit

French troops would be pulled out of Afghanistan by 2013, Hollande said, as mission
in the nation was ”finished.”

The salaries of the president and ministers would be cut by 30 percent, he said.

Germany, France’s main partner and Europe’s biggest economy, would be his first
destination as a head of state, Hollande said. He would want to meet Chancellor
Angela Merkel and discuss a ”new orientation for Europe,” including the overhaul of
the Dec. 9 European fiscal treaty and the creation of bonds issued jointly by all
members of the euro area, a measure Merkel has consistently opposed.

Hollande did not say what measures he would take to fight the economic crisis as
France. Europe’s second-largest economy is probably in recession and about 61,000
job losses are forecast for the first half by the national statistics office.

The Socialist candidate needs to show he has a plan to shield France from Europe’s
sovereign debt crisis that’s in its third year, say electors such as Eveline Bureau, a 60-
year-old Parisian grandmother of five.

‘Economic Blaze’

“We voters want to be sure the next president is fit to fight this terrible economic
crisis,” she said. “We need a fireman who can put out the economic blaze.”

France’s public debt declined in the third quarter to 85.3 percent of economic output
from 86.2 percent in the second quarter, state statistical institute Insee said on Dec.
28.

Hollande has been reluctant to unveil substantive measures to counter the crisis,
inviting criticism from Sarkozy’s camp.

Sarkozy has said repeatedly that he’s best placed to deal with the crisis, calling himself
a “captain in the storm.” He has accused Hollande of failing to have a “credible”
solution.

On Jan. 13, Standard & Poor’s cut France’s AAA credit rating in the country’ first-ever
downgrade, denting Sarkozy’s crisis-management credentials.

Hollande, who never cited the name of Sarkozy in his speech, said his rival had
achieved a “mandate of downgrading, not just of our credit rating, not just of our
public finances, but of our living standards.”

French Dream

In the hour-and-a-half speech, Hollande featured his ”simplicity” and ”authenticity,”

recalled his family background and his decades of political work in rural France.

As the crowd was cheering him, screaming ”Hollande President,” the lawmaker and
father-of-four, repeated several times that ”equality” was the pillar of his presidential
bid, citing France’s 1789 revolution and the ”French Dream” of universal and equal
rights.