John Lichfield: Europe gets its first taste of 'Tsarkozy'

In less than 60 days in office, President Nicolas Sarkozy has (according to President Sarkozy) "saved" Europe from drift and disarray. He has (according to President Sarkozy) re-captured the ideological agenda in Brussels from the free-market dogma of the "Anglo-Saxons". Domestically, "Sarkonomics" is taking shape as an unusual mixture of interfering economic policy and tax cuts for the wealthy: de Gaulle's nose and Margaret Thatcher's handbag.

M Sarkozy has, along the way, created turmoil in the main French opposition party and mayhem in the French media (which fears a "Berlusconisation" of news). All the levers of French government are in his hands, even those usually held by the Prime Minister. He even seems, in his spare time, to want to run the opposition. Hence the nick-name "Tsarkozy", coined by the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchainé.

More than two thirds of French people say the new President is doing a good job. Is he? Has President Sarkozy done much more than kick up a lot of dust and generate a great deal of smoke?

It is clear that a new era, at least a new style, in French politics has dawned. The President is no longer an avuncular old bloke in the back of a limousine. He is a man who jogs daily in the Bois de Boulogne. He is a man who invites visiting statesmen, and student leaders, to walk down the street to lunch in a trendy restaurant. Hooray for that. Hooray, too, to some parts of the Sarkozy programme of equality and "openness".

Style is important. Part of President Sarkozy's mission is to mess with France's mind as well as reform its economy and institutions. He wants to generate a sense that "everything is possible"; that work and enterprise are no longer unfashionable; that the old, invisible barriers to advancement no longer exist. Hooray to all that (if he means it).

But what of the substance of Sarkozyism? What of his promise of radical change and "rupture" with the past? Only one reform has been agreed, in outline, so far. It is neither radical nor a rupture. It is a feeble and largely cosmetic advance, which could easily have been pushed through by that great radical Jacques Chirac.

M Sarkozy's own Prime Minister, François Fillon, said that shaking up the French university system could be the most important reform of his five-year mandate. He had a point. French universities are, with a few exceptions, a mediocre, underfunded disgrace. All the available love and money goes to the elite-perpetuating system of grandes écoles.

The universities are mediocre and under-funded because there is no selection at entry and the fees are minimal. The first draft of the Great Sarkozy University Reform dodged both those issues. It timidly suggested that there should be some selection, not of undergraduates, but of graduates.

Consternation among students and teachers. Threats of demonstrations. Instant presidential U-turn. The final package gives more autonomy to university managements. Students will have better advice on what courses to join. That's about it.

President Sarkozy has said that, unlike his predecessors, he will not give in to street pressure. Judging by his university "reforms", he plans to give in - on some issues at least - before the street pressure begins. That way, he will not be seen to surrender.

In a speech in Epinal last night, President Sarkozy announced his outline plans for institutional reform. He wants more power for the President, but also more genuine power for the parliament, which would partly be elected by proportional representation. He wants to give a formal status to the opposition for the first time.

President Sarkozy says that these changes would make France more democratic. He is right. At the same time, he has been behaving like a Third World president, deliberately stirring civil strife within the main opposition party, the Socialists.

He has offered vain and frustrated individuals on the Left jobs in his government or on commissions of inquiry. The Socialists have obliged M Sarkozy by fighting over whether they should accept these overtures or not. The President calls this "occupying the space". In other words, he is busily wrecking the serious opposition that he says he wants to create.

The Tsarkozy is a little like Wally in the cartoon books. He pops up everywhere. On Monday, he was in Brussels at a meeting of finance ministers. Neither presidents nor prime ministers usually go along. He was there to explain Sarkonomics. President Sarkozy's first big fiscal reform package, finalised this week, will give billions of euros to the wealthy. Inheritance tax will virtually disappear. No one will have to pay more than 50 per cent of their income in direct tax.

The billions will be found, not by cuts in spending, but by reneging on France's promise to its partners in the euro. France will not cut its budget deficit to 1.8 per cent of GDP next year, as the previous government agreed. At the same time, M Sarkozy is campaigning for euro members to install a kind of European Economic Government - to ensure tax and budget policy in Euroland is properly co-ordinated. This is pure Chirac. Look at what I say; not at what I do.

According to parts of the French media - generally the parts owned by M Sarkozy's billionaire friends - this week's visit to Brussels was a triumph. Others suggest that he was given a rather hard time. In any case, he was obliged to drop, for the time being at any rate, his campaign pledges to manipulate the exchange rate of the euro and bring the European Bank under political control.

Neither of these promises was ever likely to be kept. Much the same can be said for President Sarkozy's boasts of the cosmic importance of the small word change that he engineered in the EU "mini-treaty" in Brussels last month. He insisted on cutting out a preamble reference to "free and undistorted competition" as an EU objective. M Sarkozy says that this opens a boulevard for European trade preference and interventionist industrial policy. The scores of other references to free competition in the EU treaties suggest otherwise.

Where does all this leave us? Confused, mostly. It remains hazardous to forecast whether President Sarkozy - hyper-active though he is - will prove to be the Action Man that he claims. The brief evidence so far suggests that he is, as Tony Blair is said to believe, "strangely unformed".

In other words, M Sarkozy has a tendency to make things up as he goes along. He is as much concerned about how things look as how they will work. He seems to govern while holding a mirror.

Could the Tsarkozy yet turn out to be a kind of supercharged Roi Jacques II?

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