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President Jacques Chirac and his center-right coalition won the May 2002 elections. Chirac was first elected in 1995, and his party, the RPR, won an absolute majority in the National Assembly (470 out of 577 seats). During his first 2 years in office, President Chirac's prime minister was Alain Juppé, who served contemporaneously as leader of Chirac's neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) Party. However, during the legislative elections of 1997, the left won a majority in the Assembly, and Juppé was subsequently replaced by Socialist Lionel Jospin. This right-left "cohabitation" arrangement, which ended with Jospin's resignation following his defeat in the first round of the May 2002 presidential elections, was the longest lasting government in the history of the Fifth Republic.
During Chirac's first term, a referendum was passed changing the presidential term of office from 7 to 5 years. This change means that, henceforth, presidential and legislative elections could take place at nearly the same time. As expected, in the second round of the presidential election on May 5th, 2002, Jacques Chirac comfortably defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen, a veteran leader of the far-right National Front. Mr. Chirac won by the largest margin (82% to 19%) ever recorded in the second round of a French presidential election; at the same time, abstention reached a record level of 20%.
The ensuing legislative elections proved to be a victory for the center-right and a reversal of the 1997 elections. The center-right coalition party--Union for a Presidential Majority (UMP)--won 399 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly, thereby securing for Chirac and his party a majority in the government. Meanwhile, the combined left, which had previously held 320 seats, took only 178, including 154 for the Socialists (PS), 21 for the Communists (PCF), and three for the Greens. The extreme-right National Front, despite the second-place finish of its leader Le Pen in the April/May 2002 presidential election, won no seats. Abstention at 39% set a new record. The UMP was rechristened the Union for a Popular Movement following the legislative elections. In March 2004 regional elections, however, Chirac’s party lost control of all but one region, while the Socialists scored major gains. The UMP won only 16.6% of the vote in the June European Parliament elections.
During the 2002 presidential election campaign, President Chirac's team made pledges on reforms which could diminish the high level of overall structural unemployment. Experts also have called on France to reduce government spending, the budget deficit, and public debt, and to allow flexibility in the implementation of the 35-hour work week. Mounting pressure for short- and long-term reforms include more labor-market flexibility, less taxation, and an improved business climate, including further privatization and liberalization. French and EU analysts stress that longer-term measures must focus on reducing the future burden of ballooning public pension and health care budgets, as well as reducing labor-related taxes. Government action to initiate such reforms may have contributed to the center-right’s poor showing in the 2004 regional and European Parliamentary elections.
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