Nicolas Sarkozy was elected on May 7, 2007. According to The Economist, in “Sarkozy’s France: The Presidency as Theatre“, his difficult first year in office can be divided into three acts. In Act II, as we reported in December, the business-oriented President Sarkozy on national television told millions of his countrymen:
The French needed to work harder, he told the country that invented the 35-hour working week. They needed to invest more in brainpower; and the state needed to tax and spend less. [more]