By Geert De Clercq
PARIS, May 6 (Reuters) – In his first words to the French
people as president-elect Francois Hollande said on Sunday that
fair treatment for all and the interests of the young would
drive his policies.
Reprising promises made in the speech which launched his
campaign, the 57-year-old Socialist said that he wished to be
judged only on these pledges to “fairness and youth”.
“Every choice I make, every decision I take will be based on
these sole criteria,” Hollande told a cheering crowd in Tulle,
his small-town political base in central France.
“When the time comes to look back on the end of my term and
on what I have done for my country, I will ask myself only this
– have I advanced the cause of equality and did I allow the new
generation to take its place in the republic,” he said.
Hollande has run on an egalitarian programme that his
conservative opponent Nicolas Sarkozy said was short on detail
but promised to balance the state’s books by taxing the rich,
the banks and the big companies.
He made waves in France and abroad by vowing to tax all
income over 1 million euros ($1.3 million) at 75 percent. His
programme proposes a fiscal reform to tax income on capital at
the same rates as income from labour.
He has promised that chief executives of state-owned or
state-controlled companies should not earn more than 20 times
the lowest wage at their firm and plans to cut the presidential
salary and ministerial pay by 30 percent.
“Everyone in the republic will be equal in terms of rights
and duties,” he said on Sunday.
Hollande also wants to reform the education system and cut
by half the number of students – estimated at 150,000 a year –
who end up without any diploma.
“No child will be left behind or abandoned,” he said.
His promise to recruit 60,000 new teachers has been strongly
criticised by Sarkozy, who said France does not have the budget
to recruit new public employees.
The focus of his education reform will be primary school,
where he wants to reduce class sizes and give extra help to
children from underprivileged backgrounds.
He plans to reduce youth unemployment by creating 150,000
jobs for youngsters in poor suburbs and he has promised to
introduce so-called “generation contracts” that will encourage
firms to hire young people on open-ended, long-term contracts.
The contracts will also encourage firms to keep older people
until retirement and organise skills transfers between the
generations. “The French dream,” Hollande said, “Is to give our
children a better life than we had ourselves.”
($1 = 0.7625 euros)
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
