Sarkozy gambles on the Germany connection

Countless times during the past two years as the eurozone crisis raged, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has stood side by side with Angela Merkel, German chancellor, anxious to present the image of an equal partnership battling to save the single currency.

Now, it seems, Ms Merkel and the example of Germany are set to play a central role in Mr Sarkozy’s battle to save his presidency as he faces an uphill struggle to win re-election in the spring.

In a 70-minute television interview on Sunday night, Mr Sarkozy acknowledged with striking frankness that, in economic terms at least, France badly lagged behind its neighbour and must swallow German medicine if it was to recover lost economic prowess.

This followed an announcement earlier in the day from Berlin that Ms Merkel intended to join Mr Sarkozy on the campaign trail. Her Christian Democratic Union, meanwhile, issued an extraordinarily supportive statement after Hermann Gröhe, the party’s secretary-general, attended a meeting of Mr Sarkozy’s fellow centre-right UMP party.

Mr Gröhe launched a fierce attack on the policies of François Hollande, the opposition Socialist candidate who leads Mr Sarkozy in the polls, saying his policies of redistribution would weaken France and Europe too.

Mr Sarkozy, who was cool towards Berlin when he came to office five years ago, has for some time been pointing to Germany as an example France must follow to revive its economy. But piling so much emphasis on a country that, after all, was once France’s most bitter enemy, looks like a bold political gambit on the eve of an election.

“It is a bit of a gamble because clearly some voters might find it unnecessary at best and inappropriate at worst,” says Thomas Klau, fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “But there is a strong body of Sarkozy’s potential electorate that believes France does need reform.”

Mr Sarkozy hammered home the point in his television appearance as he laid out proposals to boost France’s sliding competitiveness and spur employment by cutting towering labour costs and allowing companies more flexibility to vary working hours and wages.

He trotted out a series of statistics to illustrate Germany’s superior economic performance: it had three times as many youngsters in apprenticeships; French social charges on salaries were “double” those across the border; France had lost 500,000 industrial jobs in the past decade while German employment grew.

The French president twice paid homage to the former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder – “a man of great quality” – for introducing reforms that Mr Sarkozy now proposes for France. (He took care to point out that Mr Schröder was a Social Democrat.)

“The German economy chose to prioritise jobs, jobs, jobs,” Mr Sarkozy said.

Many observers ask why, after five years in office, he is only now proposing such structural reforms, which French industry and many economists have long called for. They say the move is a desperate – and risky – attempt to regain the initiative from an increasingly confident Mr Hollande.

The president certainly needs a dramatic message. Unemployment has surged in recent months to almost 10 per cent of the workforce, and the government was forced on Monday to cut its forecast for growth this year to 0.5 per cent.

Placing so much focus on Germany’s superior economic performance certainly risks playing into the hands of the extreme right National Front, whose candidate, Marine Le Pen, is leaching support from Mr Sarkozy with strident calls for France to break free from European – and German – dominance and to leave to euro.

But the president clearly believes his message will strike a chord with voters. An Ifop poll this month for the German embassy in Paris found that 74 per cent of French people felt Germany managed its economy better than France and 62 per cent thought France should be more inspired by Germany’s social and economic model.

Jean-Dominique Giuliani, chairman of the Robert Shuman Foundation think-tank, says that in recent years the French have become increasingly concerned about high levels of debt and the threat of the eurozone crisis.

“Germany is regarded as credible and Mr Sarkozy has understood that it is popular in France to have an economic policy like Germany. It resonates with the electorate,” said Mr Giuliani.

Additional reporting by Quentin Peel in Berlin