Bienvenue, Monsieur normal!

Francois Hollande's victory in France offered a sigh of relief for all Europeans disgusted at Nicolas Sarkozy's constant anti-immigrant bashing and his pandering to the far-right to compensate for the loss in public trust due to deteriorating living standards.

It also offers a sigh of relief to all those who believe in the European project, which has been shattered by austerity policies that are now breeding dangerous xenophobic populism and euro-scepticism.

The result of the Greek election (which saw an openly neo-Nazi party gaining 20 seats in parliament) is reminiscent of the German Weimer republic in the 1930s. This should be an eye-opener for those hell-bent on Europe's implosion by embarking on the destruction of an entire country's social fabric in the name of fiscal cohesion.

What was striking was the fact that Hollande won by presenting himself as an ordinary and sober politician, who neither appealed to xenophobic instincts nor to Blairite gimmicks. 

On his part, the French socialist candidate also dared defy the current neo-liberal orthodoxy by speaking of increasing the top income tax rate, while increasing government spending on education by hiring 60,000 new teachers. 

While committed to balance the budget by 2017, Hollande's message was that he will not rely on austerity but on extra revenue from taxation coupled with higher rates of economic growth.

The mystery remains what Keynesian mechanism the new French President has in mind to kick-start economic growth.

In fact there is an abyss between speaking in opposition and actually governing France and co-governing the European Union.

His bid to re-negotiate the European Growth and Stability pact could face opposition from Germany whose government is scared shitless of neighbouring countries driving it in their financial mess through fiscal recklessness.

But it is this very logic of fiscal rigour without social cohesion, that is perversely contributing to people's disillusionment with Europe. It was this disenchantment with austerity politics, coupled with a loss in personal trust, which ultimately determined Sarkozy's fate a long time ago before the electoral campaign even started.

It is a stiff reminder that the 'safe pair of hands' ploy does not work when people face deteriorating living standards.

As the new kid on the block, Hollande will be walking on thin ice. Like an acrobat he has to embark on a delicate balancing act between fiscal prudence and restoring a broken social fabric, between defending existing jobs and opening the labour market for the younger generation.

Hollande's election strengthens the voice for a European-wide tax on financial transactions, a moral imperative considering that the only ones who have not paid for crisis were the banks which created it in the first place.

What could ultimately work to Hollande's advantage is the realisation that the cost of failure is too high to even contemplate. Right-wing extremists like Marine Le Pen will be the main beneficiaries of his failures.

As the "manifesto for a bottom-up Europe" penned by sociologist Ulrick Beck and Green MEP Daniel Cohn Bendit aptly puts it:

"Political freedom cannot survive in an atmosphere of fear. It only thrives and becomes established where people have a roof over their heads and know how they are going to live tomorrow and in their old age."

In this absence of this kind of social security, the prospect of Europe going back to its permanent state of disorder civil war, which characterised its precarious existence before the end of the World War II, is not to be discounted.