PARIS (AP) – Come Monday, President Nicolas Sarkozy will likely be one of Europe’s most powerful leaders. With the government, parliament and top state bodies under his conservative camp’s control, he should face little political resistance as he seeks to reshape France.

Today’s runoff parliamentary election looks set to cement his presidential victory of last month and hand him the biggest majority in modern French politics.

The Socialists, Sarkozy’s beaten, fractured opponents, call the expected landslide a threat to democracy. Sarkozy disagrees, and and sought to show bipartisanship by appointing Socialists and centrists to his government.

He wants move fast to make France more competitive by trimming taxes and pushing people to work longer hours, and plans to introduce several measures this summer, while much of France is on vacation, apparently to avoid disruptive protests.

The 52-year old son of Hungarian immigrants is likely to have a warmer relationship with the White House than outgoing President Jacques Chirac, but faces an array of foreign policy challenges – Russia’s grip on European energy needs, reviving the unification of Europe after a string of setbacks, France’s key role in the peacekeeping force separating Israel and the Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, the threat of terrorism, and Sarkozy’s bold vision of a “Mediterranean Union” to reshape France’s relationship with North Africa.

Sarkozy’s conservatives swept the first round of voting a week ago. Their poll ratings slipped slightly at the end of the week as Socialists tapped voter worries over a too-powerful president, but not enough to threaten the right’s convincing lead.

Three polling agencies predicted Friday that the right would win between 401 and 463 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly and the left 106 to 174.

Sarkozy needs a strong parliamentary majority to claim a mandate for his reforms in a country ever-ready to go on strike and take to the streets in protest at perceived injustice.

Socialist Segolene Royal, who lost to Sarkozy in last month’s presidential race, urged voters Friday in a low-income neighborhood in Argenteuil outside Paris to turn out in larger numbers than in the first round, when barely 60 percent cast ballots.

“It is important for all the French that the nation be balanced, that democracy breathes,” she said the night before, in Toulouse.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon attacked the Socialists on Thursday night, saying the party of the rose – a socialist symbol – “has nothing left but thorns” and urged it to “look at itself in the mirror” and reform.

Unlike predecessors who largely left daily governance and unpopular reforms to prime ministers, Sarkozy says he’ll be “a president who governs.” France’s constitution clearly separates presidential and prime ministerial powers, but the French president wields broader powers than most European counterparts.

Some French journalists have expressed concern about Sarkozy’s close ties to media magnates and business leaders, and there are those who say the more hands-on he is the more blame will fall on him for unpopular actions.

“This system could turn against him very violently,” said Dominique Reynie of the Institute for Political Sciences.

Brahim Abbou, who organizes get-out-the-vote events in housing projects home to many black and Arab families that were rocked by riots in 2005, warned that the problems that drove that violence “haven’t been solved” and could re-ignite.

Among Sarkozy’s other plans are a measure to punish 16-year-olds as adults for serious crimes, reforming the university system and requiring immigrants to earn a steady income and speak French before they can bring their families to France.

The Socialists, after losing three straight presidential elections and facing five more years in opposition, must decide whether to shift toward the center to survive, as have other European leftists.

The new parliament is to convene June 26, then hold an extraordinary session through early August.

—