FRANCE: Members of France's Socialist Party yesterday approved the group's policy platform for the 2007 presidential election, including pledges to halve the unemployment rate and introduce gay marriage.
Party members are due to select their presidential candidate in November with parliamentary deputy Ségolène Royal, the only woman candidate, the current frontrunner.
Socialist spokesman Julien Dray said some 95,000 of the party's 202,000 members took part in the manifesto vote, with 85 per cent backing the document drawn up by leftist leaders.
Socialist leader François Hollande has insisted that the eventual party candidate must adhere to the plan, but all the presidential hopefuls have said they will add new proposals nearer to the election.
"The sexy ideas will come out a bit later," said former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is struggling to make inroads into Ms Royal's opinion poll lead.
According to a poll published earlier this week, she would beat the conservative frontrunner, Nicolas Sarkozy, if an election was held now.
The socialists suffered a humiliating reverse in the last presidential election in 2002 when their candidate, Lionel Jospin, failed to make the second-round run-off after losing out to far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round.
The socialist programme includes pledges to raise the minimum monthly wage to €1,500 by 2012, from €1,218 at present; to halve the unemployment rate, now 9.3 per cent, within five years; and to abolish a law that makes it easier for small firms to hire and fire workers.
On industrial energy policy, the socialists would renationalise the utility group EDF; reduce France's reliance on nuclear energy; and target 20-50 per cent of French energy needs to be covered by renewable energies until 2020.
On social policy, homosexuals would be allowed to marry and adopt children; illegal immigrants could apply for residence papers after spending 10 years in France, a right abolished by interior minister Mr Sarkozy; and education would become a budget priority. The party would also replace the European constitution, which French voters rejected in a referendum last year, with a strictly institutional EU treaty.