FACTBOX: Policies of French presidential candidate Royal
(Reuters) - Socialist Segolene Royal will face right-wing rival Nicolas Sarkozy in a run-off vote to elect France's president on May 6 after she survived the first round of the election on Sunday, television polls showed.
Following are key policy proposals made by Royal, who hopes to become France's first woman president:
ECONOMIC POLICY:
- Raise monthly minimum wage to 1,500 euros over five years; 5 percent increase in small pensions at or below minimum wage
- Create 500,000 jobs for young workers. Ensure no young person is left unemployed for more than six months without right to training or job. Encourage small firms to hire non-qualified school leavers, with state paying wages and charges for a year
- Abolish government's CNE labor law, which makes it easier for small firms to hire and fire workers
- Review 35-hour work week with aim of "reducing negative consequences for workers and employees"
- Aim for annual economic growth of 2.5 percent from 2008; cut public debt to 60 percent of gross domestic product by 2012 from some 64 percent in 2006
TAX, STATE AID, RESEARCH, BUSINESS LAWS
- Keep overall taxes and charges at current level
- Make state aid to companies conditional on promise not to shed staff when company is making substantial profits. Aid would have to be repaid if company relocated abroad
- Tax firms more on dividends, less on reinvested profits; change tax treatment of stock options; abolish "golden parachutes"
- Increase spending on research by 10 percent a year
- Build 120,000 public housing units a year
- Limit fees banks charge customers; allow customers to launch class action suits against them
LAW AND ORDER
- Create new "neighborhood police"; boost police presence in difficult areas
- Send young offenders to military-style boot camps
- Double budget for justice system to make it work faster
- Pass law to target violence against women
- Make it easier for victims of crime to file complaints by making police social workers available at police stations and allowing complaints to be filed via Internet.
ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT
- Create state energy cluster using EDF and GDF. Royal adviser has said this would not imply merger of two utilities
- Aim for 20 percent of French energy needs to be covered by renewable energies by 2020
- Impose "exceptional levy" on oil companies to pay for transport initiatives. Discourage transport by truck
- Create post of deputy prime minister with responsibility for environment
- Ban GMO testing in open countryside
EDUCATION
- Reduce class sizes, put second adult in classes if needed
- Change school catchment system to create socially mixed classes
HEALTH
- Increase research into serious illnesses
- Free contraceptives for women under 25
INSTITUTIONS
- Create "participative" democracy in all forms of public life, including citizen juries to oversee parliamentarians
- Limit number of ministers to around 15
- Strengthen parliament's powers
- Allow foreign residents to vote in local elections
- Give residency papers to immigrants who meet certain criteria, such as time spent in France, work contract
- Allow gay couples to marry and adopt children
EUROPE
- Make European Central Bank adopt growth and employment as objectives as well as controlling inflation
- Favors Turkey's EU entry in principle but says EU has to overcome its own problems before admitting Turkey
- Draw up new constitution including text on workers' rights and public services and put the treaty to referendum in 2009
