PARIS — Francois Hollande was sworn in as president of France on Tuesday in a ceremony that returns a Socialist to the highest level of government at a time when the eurozone is plunging deeper into the debt crisis and the French economy is stagnating.
Hollande, who beat incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy in the May 6 runoff of the presidential election, will be propelled immediately into the eurozone crisis with a trip to Berlin later in the day to meet German chancellor Angela Merkel.
“My mandate is to turn around France in a fair manner and open a new way in Europe,” Hollande said in an inauguration speech.
The new French president has vowed to challenge Merkel, who imposed spending cuts as the main remedy to repair the public finances of heavily-indebted European countries, by recommending new growth-friendly policies.
But the first meeting of Hollande and Merkel comes as the collapse of coalition talks in Greece edged the Mediterranean country closer to an exit from the eurozone.
At home, Hollande will inherit a lackluster economy. Figures released Tuesday showed the French economy stalled in the first quarter and grew only 0.1 percent in the final three months of 2011.
Anemic growth — the Bank of France expects stagnation again in the second quarter — will make it hard for Hollande to curb unemployment, which has risen to a 13-year high of 10 percent.
Later this week, Hollande will travel to the US to meet with President Obama and attend meetings of the Group of Eight and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Hollande has said he would use the opportunity of the NATO summit to announce his decision to accelerate the withdrawal of French combat troops from Afghanistan.
Hollande also named Jean-Marc Ayrault, the head of the Socialist bloc in parliament and mayor of Nantes, as his prime minister Tuesday.
“The president of the republic has named Jean-Marc Ayrault as prime minister and tasked him with forming a new government,” the Elysee Palace said in a brief statement.
Ayrault is expected to name his government on Wednesday, ahead of its first cabinet session, likely on Thursday.
Like Hollande, 62-year-old Ayrault has never held a senior government post and has little experience in top-level governing, but is a longtime ally of the president.
Ayrault is also a Germanophile and German-language speaker — skills that should prove useful in building ties with France’s powerful neighbor and tackling Hollande’s goal of reshaping Europe’s economic policies.
Elected in 1977 as mayor of the northwestern town of Saint-Herblain, he has been mayor of Nantes since 1989 and a member of parliament since 1986.
He supported Hollande during the US-style primary that saw him defeat Martine Aubry for the party’s nomination and played a prominent role as an advisor to Hollande during his campaign.
In 1997, after he took over as head of the Socialists in parliament, Ayrault was convicted on favoritism charges for having awarded a municipal printing contract in Nantes to a businessman with links to the party.
He was given a six-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay a $5,900 fine, but the conviction was officially wiped from the record in 2007.
With AFP and The Wall Street Journal.