Hollande wins French election

Socialist Francois Hollande will be sworn in as France's new president on May 15, after defeating Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday’s presidential election. Hollande will accompany Sarkozy at an annual ceremony tomorrow to commemorate the end of World War Two. Both the euro and French stock market slipped at the news of Hollande’s win, since the Socialist has promised to overturn many of Sarkozy’s economic reforms, and challenge Germany’s focus on austerity in tackling the euro zone’s debt crisis. Hollande has promised to instead promote economic growth to lift Europe out of its current difficulties.

“My initial reaction would be that Hollande can’t really deliver on growth if he doesn’t implement an austerity package, which Sarkozy was not able to do,” said Kishore Jayabalan, the director of the Rome office of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

“I’m hoping that Hollande will be like a lot of other centre-left prime ministers in recent European history, like Schröder and Blair, and be able to deliver real economic reforms while placating perhaps some of his leftist coalition partners,” he said.

Listen to the full interview by Charles Collins with Kishore Jayabalan: