France: New president to 'restore the value of work'

France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has placed reinstating “full employment” – defined as a cut in the unemployment rate from the current 8.3% to 5% by the end of his five-year term in office – at the top of his agenda, together with “restoring the value of work”.

On 6 May 2007, Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate, obtained 53.06% of the vote in the second round of the presidential elections and replaced Jacques Chirac, who had been in power since 1995.