The end of the Chirac era

"This is the end of twelve years of presidency and a forty-five year political career. It is also the first time in the 5th Republic that a French president is voluntarily handing over power", notes Franck Renout, the daily's Paris correspondent. "Chirac was never an ideologist. While the world was changing, its borders opening, economies being liberalised, the president did his best to manage France's historical, cultural and economic legacy. People even jest that the museum of primitive art in Paris, the Quai de Branly Museum, is the one and only tangible result that Chirac has come up with in his own country. The past few years have indeed shown no ideology, no vision, no mission for the future."

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