there has also been a historical shift to the extreme right wing party Le Front National.

I'm just not sure where this notion of so-called 'austerity' is coming from. Growth in French government expenditure, according to the latest Eurostat data, has slowed from its previous rate but it's still growing strongly. That is to say, there has been no reduction in French government expenditure, none at all. In fact, quite the opposite.

Given the size of French government debt and the already massive size of the French state as a proportion of GDP, it's a bit hard to see where M Hollande will find the money to use government expenditure to promote growth. If he tries, we can expect the yields on French government bonds to rocket up to unsustainable levels.

Sooner or later, a politician has to tell the French people that the era of prosperity based on cheap, borrowed money is over. If they are to escape a decade or more of economic stagnation, they have to reform their labour laws; remove the institutional discrimination against immigrants, particularly those from North Africa; improve productivity; withdraw from the Common Agricultural Policy; and so on. In other words, the French have to stop living in a world of adolescent fantasy, based on 'the French Model' and grow up.

The French and indeed most of Europe need to face the fact they can no longer kick the debt can down the road.
A debt can created by the creation of virtually worthless derivatives, that made both govt and business/bank balance sheets look much better than they really were?
The Americans tried to address a worse economic problem, with president Obama and his so-called socialist agenda/change we can all believe in?
Much of which, which has been stymied by members of his own democratic party?
Today's America, once the premier economy in the western world, looks very much like depression era America, with charity food parcels being handed out in poorer schools, and where the poorer citizens, around 40%, queue for hours and hours, for charity medicine/dentistry.
All over America, there are now outskirts tent cities, because the homeless shelters, have had to raise the house full signs all over the place.
And, we see once again, the depression replicating creation, of generational post code poverty traps.
The conservative fix is simply to downsize the charity/govt benefits most if not all the seriously disadvantaged rely on, thereby compounding the problems and the crime wave that seems to go with it.
All while keeping things like an even more expensive farm bill/export subsidies?
We have to hope that the new French President doesn't follow the blind conservative economic fix, with even more counter productive austerity, a la America and or, a lame-duck President, with his policy paradigm virtually hamstrung, by conservatives in his own side of politics?
Somewhere sometime, some western leader needs to understand, that he/she can't end the snowballing poverty and protect privilege at the same time.
There needs to be a financial haircut for the privileged wealthy; migration to where the work is; and, energy independence and dramatically reduced energy costs, that will allow most of the worst affected economies to very slowly recover?
High priced Russian energy products have clearly not helped?
Given the sheer size of, the money for bugger all, derivative created debt problem, full recovery/enduring prosperity could take as long 30 years? Rhrosty