French president Nicolas Sarkozy appointed reform-minded conservative Francois Fillon as his new prime minister today.

Jacques Chirac urged his compatriots to stay united and proud of the nation he led for 12 years in his final presidential appeal tonight.

French President Jacques Chirac ends his final full day in office today with an evening farewell to the nation that he has led for 12 years.

France’s president-in-waiting is beginning the task of forming his government today, after voters swept him to power.

French citizens voted en masse today to choose a new president, in a suspense-filled election that could be a turning point for France as it tries to steer a course into the 21st century.

FRENCH interior minister and right wing favourite Nicolas Sarkozy launched his campaign for the presidency at a triumphant party congress in Paris, issuing an appeal to voters of all persuasions to make him a “president of the people” at April’s election.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has been sidelined. President Jacques Chirac has been forced into a subtle switch of loyalties to save face. And the two leaders’ mutual rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, is now at centre-stage.

The chairman of EMI Group PLC, the world’s No. 3 record company, today condemned French moves to legalise online music file-sharing as an “aberration,” and urged a rethink by the government.

French President Jacques Chirac remained hospitalised for a third day today with a blood vessel problem as the head of his political party said no one would stop his quest for the presidency in two years’ time.

THE European Union should suspend further enlargement of the bloc after French and Dutch voters rejected its constitution, France’s powerful interior minister said yesterday in a veiled reference to Turkey’s entry bid.

FRENCH President Jacques Chirac is seeking to recover momentum by reshuffling his cabinet after the humiliating rejection of the EU constitution.

President Jacques Chirac today met his beleaguered prime minister, who was widely expected to be fired after France roundly rejected the European Union’s first constitution in a referendum that threw the Union’s future into disarray.

FRANCE’s political sphere changed dramatically when Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious finance minister, was formally named the new leader of the ruling conservative party - widely seen as the start of his march to replace Jacques Chirac as French president in 2007.

The French Parliament will today debate Muslim-majority Turkey’s hopes of joining the European Union, a bid that has so far little real support from either the political mainstream or the French public

FRENCH President Jacques Chirac asked his unpopular Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to stay on despite the regional poll disaster for the centre right, but ordered him to form a new government.

France’s opposition is celebrating today after crushing the conservative government of President Jacques Chirac in local elections and setting the stage for a cabinet shake-up.

The French government has taken its first formal step toward legally banning the Muslim head scarf from public schools, adopting the measure in a Cabinet session.