Sarkozy: 2010 is year for 'renewal'
Pensions reform, a revised carbon tax and cutting unemployment are on the government's agenda for coming year
NICOLAS Sarkozy has promised to press ahead with a major reform of France's state pensions system and care arrangements for the elderly in 2010.
The president said in his third annual televised New Year's Eve address that his other priorities for the year included cutting unemployment - currently around the 10% mark - and shaking up the French system of local and regional government which is "too heavy, too complicated, too onerous".
He also confirmed he would redraft his carbon tax, which was thrown out by the French constitutional court last week just days before it was due to come into force. "I am not a man who gives up at the first hurdle," Sarkozy said.
On state pension reform, the president said: “In 2010 we will need to consolidate our pensions system, whose future financing I have a duty to secure, and face the challenge of how to care for the elderly, which in the decades ahead will be one of the most painful problems faced by our families."
Sarkozy said the past year had been difficult and although "our ordeals are not yet over", 2010 would be a year of "renewal".
He thanked the French public for their individual contribution to getting out of the economic crisis.
"This year has been difficult for all of us. No country has been spared. But our country has not suffered as badly as others," Sarkozy said.
"Together we have avoided the worst, but we have also prepared for the future. Over the course of the past year, in the midst of all sorts of difficulties, a new world has begun to emerge."
