Voters Give Hollande A Socialist Majority

A few weeks ago, the French people kicked out their conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and replaced him with socialist Francois Hollande (pictured above). It looked like the French people were tired of the "austerity" program that Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel had imposed on the European Union -- a failed program that had driven many European nations deeper into recession. The only question at that time was, would the French follow through and give Hollande a socialist parliament?

Well, they have done that. After the second round of parliamentary voting, the Socialist Party has wound up with a majority of seats in the French parliament. They have won at least 312 seats in the 577 member National Assembly, and probably more. That means Hollande and his Socialist Party won't have to rely on any other party to form a government, and it also signals the death knell for "austerity" in France, and probably in the European Union as a whole. The conservative parties will have between 212 and 234 seats in the National Assembly.

The two biggest economies in the European Union are Germany and France. When both had conservative leaders, they could strong-arm the other countries of the union into accepting "austerity" -- regardless of what that austerity did to their separate economies. But now that France has elected a socialist government (a government that has repudiated austerity), it is unlikely that Germany's conservative government can force austerity on the other nation's any longer. Germany needed the backing of France to enforce austerity, and it no longer has that backing.

The French voters may have just saved the European Union from a much longer and deeper recession -- and that will help economies around the world, including our own. Now if we can just defeat enough Republicans in November to end our own version of "austerity", maybe we can get back on the road to a real recovery.