French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy has an ambitious agenda for change but must avoid the bitter protests that have greeted previous reform efforts.
Mr Sarkozy takes office on Wednesday and intends to begin immediately on a 100-day programme that will shake up labour, education and tax law, tighten rules on young offenders and look for a solution to the impasse over the European constitution.
He will also bring measures to boost spending power, including a law to make mortgage interest payments tax deductible, and he has pledged to include unions in talks.
The unions have held back from direct confrontation, but the head of the powerful CGT union warned last week that Mr Sarkozy's large election victory did not give him "legitimacy for just anything".
Students have already protested his plans to grant more financial autonomy to universities and allow more selection in admitting students, but there is likely to be more serious opposition from organised labour.
"If he carries out half of what he has promised then there will be all sorts of problems," Jacques Attali, a close aide to former Socialist president Francois Mitterrand, said last week.
Among the chief measures Mr Sarkozy is planning is a rule that would force public sector transport workers to provide a minimum service during strikes and a new, more flexible labour contract.
The contract, which Mr Sarkozy says will encourage employers to take on more staff by making it easier to lay workers off during downturns, is seen as one of the key elements of his programme but also carries the greatest risks.
The new president is proposing to meet unions after next month's parliamentary elections to discuss the contract. But CGT leader Bernard Thibault made clear last week that he was not enthusiastic about the notion of "flexisecurity" supposedly embodied in the contract.