INCOMING FRENCH president François Hollande will formally take office today, and within hours of his inauguration will travel to Berlin for his first meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Mr Hollande, France’s first left-wing president in 17 years, will be sworn in at a ceremony at the Élysée Palace before travelling along the Champs-Élysées to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.
On a day freighted with symbolism, the president will pay tribute to Jules Ferry, the 19th-century statesman who is seen as the father of France’s secular education system, and to Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
Faithful to his campaign pledge for a “normal” presidency to reflect France’s straitened circumstances, the day’s events will be sombre and relatively low-key, with no other heads of state invited and neither Mr Hollande’s children nor those of his partner, Valérie Trierweiler, present.
Within hours of his swearing-in, Mr Hollande will fulfil his first campaign promise by making his first overseas trip to Germany. He and Dr Merkel are due to discuss plans for a growth pact and the unfolding political situation in Greece.
“Presidents are normally judged at the end of their terms, but a lot is going to depend on the beginning,” Mr Hollande told journalists yesterday. “We have some demanding weeks ahead of us.”
Before leaving for Berlin, Mr Hollande is expected to name his prime minister. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the socialist leader in the lower house of parliament and a fluent German speaker with good contacts in Berlin, is the favourite for the post, although party leader Martine Aubry and Mr Hollande’s communications chief, Manuel Valls, may also be in the running.
The unveiling of the full cabinet is not expected until tomorrow, but there is widespread speculation that the finance ministry will go to Michel Sapin, a former holder of the office.
The cabinet is expected to include a mixture of trusted old hands and a solid core of members from the party’s centrist wing.
Mr Sapin, who served as finance minister under the last socialist president, François Mitterrand, is one of Mr Hollande’s oldest friends and architect of his election manifesto.
Another Socialist veteran, Laurent Fabius, is widely seen as the leading candidate for the foreign ministry. The appointment would revive a career that included a number of senior cabinet posts, including that of prime minister under Mr Mitterrand when Mr Fabius was just 37.
Mr Valls, representing the party’s right wing, could be in line for the interior minister’s post, having seen his standing enhanced by running Mr Hollande’s communications operation during the campaign. The cabinet will include as many women as men.
One of the incoming government’s priorities will be securing the Socialist Party a majority in June’s parliamentary elections so as to avoid Mr Hollande having to “cohabit”. Opinion polls give left-wing parties about 45 per cent for the National Assembly vote, and put the centre-right on 32 per cent. The far-right National Front is on about 12 per cent.
