French Firsts

David Ignatius has a good column on the new French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, in the Post today. He’s no free-market hero, but he certainly seems interested in pushing France in a far better economic direction than they’d been going. This bit from Ignatius’ column certainly highlights one of the big shifts:

The fact that he is appearing before the French business group known as Medef is itself a break with precedent. Part of the old French “social economy” consensus was a conviction that there was something unpleasant about business — certainly about making money. To be an entrepreneur in this culture was regarded as dangerously Anglo-Saxon. No wonder no president before Sarkozy had spoken at Medef’s annual gathering.

Still, it’s not all good news:

It must be said that Sarkozy so far has talked a more aggressive game on economic policy than he has actually played. He has avoided the confrontations with France’s powerful labor unions that will be necessary to break the practices he denounces. Indeed, his big policy announcement here was to allow more business activity on Sundays — a popular idea but hardly a profile in courage.

Over at ShopFloor, NAM’s Carter Wood has more on the French leader.