Some people hoped that new French president Nicolas Sarkozy would liberalize France’s economy and reduce the burden of government. But all the evidence points in the other direction.

The International Herald Tribune reports on Sarkozy’s statist choices:

[C]riticism of Sarkozy’s interventionist language…is mounting. The question that Eurocrats, central bankers and fellow politicians are asking is the same they asked three years ago: Is the man who wants to shake up France’s labor market and ignite economic growth with a flurry of tax cuts the liberal European he claims? Or is he an old-style Gaullist in modern disguise?

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“Institutions, procedures, directives and rules are not ends in themselves,” Sarkozy declared in Strasbourg, calling for a Europe “that does not submit itself to the pseudo-dictatorship of the market.…

Sarkozy has shown little willingness to abandon certain nationalist instincts of past French leaders. He has defended EU agricultural subsidies against demands for greater trade liberalization. He has shown little inclination to withdraw from France’s aim of creating national champions, particularly in the energy sector. On Thursday, he debated the future of the state-controlled gas company Gaz de France with his prime minister and finance minister. And rather than encouraging globalization, he has appeared to reinforce French fears of unfettered capitalism — for example, by fighting to remove a largely symbolic affirmation of EU competition policy from the revamped treaty agreed last month in Brussels.

“Sarkozy talks right but rules left. Portrayals of him as a French Thatcher who will shake things up are vastly exaggerated,” said one EU official in reference to the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. “He is, after all, French.”