French president Nicolas Sarkozy regains opinion poll lead

PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy has overtaken Socialist challenger Francois Hollande for the first time in an opinion poll on the first round of France’s April-May election after attacking the European Union’s trade and immigration policies.

The conservative incumbent was still shown losing to Hollande in a second-round run-off, but by a narrower margin.

Sarkozy’s poll boost came as far-right leader Marine Le Pen, ranked third in polls, said she had secured the 500 official sponsors needed to enter the presidential contest.

Candidates have until Friday to obtain the requisite backing of 500 elected officials to compete in the April 22 first round, after which the two frontrunners face off in a May 6 runoff.

A failure by Le Pen to gather enough signatures could have rocked expectations, given her 16 per cent support level.

In a morale boost for Sarkozy, who has trailed Hollande in polls for months, an Ifop/Fiducial survey put his first-round score at 28.5 percent, up from 27 per cent at the end of February and overtaking Hollande, whose score slipped to 27 per cent from 28.5 per cent previously.

The poll gave Hollande 54.5 percent of the second-round vote to Sarkozy’s 45.5 percent, a narrower lead as Hollande lost two percentage points and Sarkozy gained two.

“I hope the swallow we saw this morning will make the spring,” Alain Minc, a longtime advisor to Sarkozy, told Europe 1 radio, citing an ancient Greek proverb popular in France.

The election is a duel between Sarkozy, who promises tighter immigration controls, structural economic reforms and policy referendums, and Hollande, who is running on a tax-and-spend programme while also promising to cut the budget deficit.

The poll was taken after Sarkozy told his biggest rally yet on Sunday that he would erect unilateral barriers to trade and immigration unless the European Union takes tougher stands.

Seeking to breathe new life into his campaign, Sarkozy said Europe should have a law, modelled on the Buy American Act, requiring governments to buy European-made products. He also threatened to pull France out of Europe’s Schengen open-borders zone unless progress is made on controlling immigration flows.

Hollande said Sarkozy’s move was a sign the incumbent was running out of inspiration. “He will try anything,” the Socialist said in a France 3 television interview.