French President champions workers ahead of G-8

PARIS (AP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy positioned himself as the defender of workers' rights and financial regulation Monday, claiming ground normally occupied by his Socialist opponents now in disarray over the loss of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as their best-hope challenger in next year's presidential elections.

The conservative president used a speech ahead of a summit he's hosting of leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations to push a message that workers need to be protected from the excesses of capitalism.

"There is no market without regulation," Sarkozy told a hastily arranged meeting in Paris on the "social dimension of globalization."

The president's words were a departure from his message during the previous election, when he championed the free market and said his country's generous labor rights and byzantine business bureaucracy were weighing down the economy.

"How can we accept that eight out of 10 people in the world don't have any access to social protection?" Sarkozy asked Monday.

On Saturday, thousands marched in the northern city of Le Havre to protest the upcoming G-8 summit in the plush nearby resort of Deauville. The meeting is seen by activists as a rich-club meeting that pays little heed to workers' needs.

Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief now facing allegations he sexually assaulted a hotel maid in New York, had been seen as the Socialist Party's strongest candidate to straddle the divide between the demands of business and labor unions. The party is now scrambling to rally behind a new figurehead for next April's vote.

Sarkozy blamed light-touch regulation for the recent financial crisis, and said social protection had served as a stabilizer that helped speed up economic recovery.

"Following the crisis I promised France that I would do everything to reform the financial capitalism that led us into disaster," Sarkozy said, adding that he would fight to prevent competition between countries trying to attract companies with minimal regulation.

"Let us not forget the pressure of migration, which today has its origins in social inequalities," he said, in a nod to French fears of mass immigration from North Africa in the wake of the popular uprisings there.