The end of the Chirac era

The outgoing French President Jacques Chirac was popular because politically he was without fear, notes Stefan Brändle. His popularity "was perhaps increased by the fact that he didn't even try to pretend to voters that he had a political agenda... But the French knew: just as Chirac always puts himself first, he will also always put his country first. His political agenda was called France. Chirac was neither a left-winger nor a right-winger; he was a Gaullist, or in other words, a passionate Frenchman. Just as his first decision after he took office in 1995 was to schedule nuclear tests in the South Pacific without caring about the opposition of the international community, at his last EU summit three days ago he tried to sell off France's nuclear power supply as renewable energy."

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