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| Socialist Party newly elected president Francois Hollande waves after the results of the second round of the presidential election on May 6, 2012 in Tulle, southwestern France |
The estimates were carried by French media after all polling stations closed at 20:00 (18:00 GMT).
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| Socialist Party newly elected president Francois Hollande greets people as he arrives to gives a speech on May 6, 2012 in Tulle, southwestern France |
Francois Hollande capitalized on France's economic woes and President Sarkozy's unpopularity. He has also promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than €1million a year, and lower the retirement age to 60.
Sarkozy, who has been in office since 2007, had promised to reduce France's large budget deficit through budget cuts. It is only the second time an incumbent president has failed to win re-election since the start of France’s Fifth Republic in 1958.
Analysts suggest this election result could have great implications for the entire eurozone. Numbers show it had a very high turn-out of voters, reaching a record high of over 80 per cent.
France's future first lady, Valerie Trierweiler, took to the web to tweet her joy at the election of her partner.
"Simply proud to accompany the new president of the republic and still just as happy to share Francois's life," she announced in her micro-blog according to AFP.
Prof. Pierre Guerlain, a political scientist at Paris West University, says that Francois Hollande will face many constraints on his way to changing France and Europe as a whole. However, the new attitude should at least bring some necessary changes.
“He cannot change the way Europe functions but, still, a new person with a new attitude in a new situation can bring some change, especially since he is likely to get the support of southern Europeans in their demands towards Germany,” he told RT.
Guerlain also believes that Hollande’s victory will make French foreign policy “somewhat tougher in the West.” He had already promised to tell Washington that France will pull its troops out of Afghanistan at the end of 2012 – something that journalist and political scientist Nabila Ramdani calls “unrealistic.”
“It will take an awful lot of time to achieve. So we are more realistically looking at 2013, if not later,” she told RT.
Economist Patrick Young, however, says there is no real difference between Sarkozy and his successor. He believes that the new man, like the one he has ousted, does not offer a solution to France's financial woes. Referring to the same irony of the election, Alex Korbel, a spokesman for the Contrepoints.Org news site, told RT that “French voters had a choice between a man they no longer wanted – Sarkozy – and a man they didn’t really want – Hollande.”
In Young’s opinion, the economic policies put forward by all the candidates in the election “were all based upon the most juvenile understanding of economics”
“Can [Hollande] turn around the whole ship of what have been the pygmy achievements of the poison dwarf of the Elysee? No, of course he can’t…It’s still, unfortunately, going to be a disaster,” he told RT.
As for the European relationship, changes are also unlikely in this direction, Young asserts.
“Everybody is trying to make as if it’s going to be some sort of huge controversy, but let’s remember – only a couple of years ago Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy couldn’t stand the sight of each other,” he noted.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has congratulated Francois Hollande on his victory and invited him to Berlin for a first meeting that would set the groundwork for a consensus on growth policies vital to the future of the eurozone.
The US President Barack Obama was the first leader from outside Europe to call with congratulations. He said he looked forward to working with Hollande on "shared economic and security challenges", Reuters reports.
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