Experts: France is a ticking time bomb

Against the backdrop of the still steadily declining confidence of financial markets in Italy and Spain, experts warn of an even greater threat to the eurozone from France.

According to the chief foreign policy adviser to former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Joachim Bitterlich, there is a ticking time bomb in France. While Italy and Spain, with great difficulty, but already with some progress, are attempting to escape from the tenacious clutches of the crisis, it is France that today poses the greatest danger to a united Europe.

The most influential French economic commentator, Nicolas Baverez, speaks even more harshly on this topic, emphasizing that the upcoming presidential elections will be the last chance for France to modernize on the basis of democratic choice. Otherwise, by the summer at the latest, financial markets will inflate interest rates on French bonds, as was the case in Italy, and the country risks “breaking into a wall of debt,” regardless of whether Nicolas Sarkozy becomes the head of France again or his so far leading socialist rival Francois Hollande.

Meanwhile, a survey conducted a week before the presidential elections by the popular French publication Journal du Dimanche shows that the current head of the country, Nicolas Sarkozy, has earned a reputation as the most disliked president since World War II. The IFOP sociological service confirms these findings: 64 percent of French respondents are dissatisfied with Sarkozy's activities.

Nevertheless, in the first round this coming Sunday, the current owner of the Elysee Palace, according to polls, can score as much as his socialist rival - approximately 27.5 percent. But in the second round on May 6, according to various polls, Hollande may overtake Sarkozy by 8-12 percent. And then he will become a socialist who will be able to break the series of three consecutive terms of conservative rule in the Elysee Palace.