The big political event in Europe over the weekend was a speech given in Marseilles by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s interior minister and the right’s standard-bearer for the French presidency in next year’s elections.

Arnaud Leparmentier of Le Monde thinks that Sarkozy’s speech marked a sharp move to the right, in the response to the emergence of a moderate, Ségolène Royal, as the likely Socialist candidate. Leparmentier cites, in particular, Sarkozy’s attack on the generation of May 1968.