Mood:
brightTopic: News
French conservatives win parliamentary majority
PARIS -- The conservative party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy has won a clear parliamentary majority in elections. That's seen as crucial to his vision for opening up the French economy.
Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement will face little resistance to the rash of measures he plans to introduce within weeks to make France's sluggish economy more competitive and less protective.
But today's legislative runoff suggests that voters in France also wanted to send the hard-driving, U-S-friendly president a message that his powers are not absolute.
Sarkozy's party and its allies won 346 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, which was fewer than the 359 seats the U-M-P used to have. Led by the Socialists, the opposition left took a better-than-expected 226 seats -- a considerable improvement over their 149 in the last parliament.
KGAN.com ~ CBS 2 News - Assoc Press ** French conservatives win parliamentary majority
