beset by a political malaise. The Socialist Party
suffered from the deepening unpopularity of the
president, though he had long ceased to follow
traditional socialist policies. Meanwhile, rivalry
and friction between Chirac and Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing tarnished the appeal of the right.
Mitterrand hoped that replacing Rocard with
Mme Edith Cresson as prime minister would
restore the fortunes of the socialist government.
But her approval rating sank fast. Essentially, eco-
nomic policy had not changed and there were no
signs of an expansion sufficiently strong to absorb
the unemployed.
The issue that provoked most heat was the
position of the North African migrants. Jean-
Marie Le Pen’s National Front based its strong
support largely on this widespread hostility to
Arab migrants, a community mainly poor and
concentrated in a few cities like Marseilles and
Paris. In 1991 official figures estimated that 4
million migrants, mainly Muslim Arabs from
North Africa, lived in France. Their birth rate is
high and about 1 million children have been left
out of this census. Racism also extended to a
renewal of anti-Semitism among the National
Front, which managed to seem the only really
dynamic party in a stagnant political scene. In
regional elections in March 1992 the Socialist
Party gained only 2 per cent more votes than the
National Front (at 14 per cent). In April 1992,
after less than a year, Mme Cresson was replaced
as prime minister by Pierre Bérégovoy.
The deep malaise in politics was also reflected
in the uncertainty over where France should be
heading in the 1990s. Once the enthusiastic
founding partners of the new Europe in close
alliance with the Germans, the French people were
deeply divided in September 1992 when asked to
approve the Maastricht Treaty. The ‘yes’ vote was
only just sufficient, and many people had voted in
favour not out of a feeling of enthusiasm for
Europe but rather for negative reasons. There was
a widespread fear of the newly united Germany of
82 million. By a small margin the French people
decided that it was safer to keep Germany
hemmed in by European institutions, despite its
preponderant weight in such a union, instead of
leaving France to face an unfettered German
colossus alone. But the biggest issue in France in
1993 was the continued recession and unemploy-
ment. At the elections for the National Assembly
in March 1993 the Socialists (in power for twelve
years) were swept out of office. The electoral sys-
tem exaggerated the swing of seats. The Socialists
lost 212 seats and were left with 70. Chirac’s RPR
now occupied 247 and Giscard d’Estaing’s UDF
213, the communists fell 3 to 23, the National
Front lost their only seat. Thus the right had
an overwhelming majority in the 577-strong
Assembly. Mitterrand chose Edouard Balladur
of the RPR as the new prime minister for a new
period of ‘cohabitation’. But the French people
and the two rival aspirants, Giscard d’Estaing and
Chirac, were waiting for the presidential elections
and a chance to unseat Mitterrand himself.
Mitterrand’s last years in office were clouded
by rumours of scandal. Mme Cresson was not a
success as prime minister; she was followed by
Pierre Bérégovoy, who committed suicide amid
allegations of corruption. There were questions
about Mitterrand’s Vichy past and his post-war
friendships with collaborators. The economy had
stalled and his determination to keep in step with
Germany on the path towards European integra-
tion kept the French franc strong and unemploy-
ment high. President Mitterrand had been in
office for longer than any of his predecessors. It
was time for a change; moreover, he was termi-
nally ill and would only survive the forthcoming
presidential elections by a few months.In May 1995 Jacques Chirac became the new
president. His promise to make the reduction of
unemployment a priority, to increase wages, to870 WESTERN EUROPE GATHERS STRENGTH: AFTER 1968
National Assembly election, first round, June 1988
% SeatsSocialists (PS, MRG and affiliated 37.60 277
parties)
Communist Party (PC) 11.32 27
Union French Democracy (UDF)
37.75
130
Rally for the Republic (RPR) 129
National Front 9.65 1
Other parties of the right 2.85 13