PARIS (Reuters) — Whoever wins France’s presidential election will inherit a fractured, fragile society, in need of economic reform and a major dose of self belief. One of the world’s wealthiest and most cultured nations, with a quality of life envied by others, France also has the highest unemployment rate of any major industrial power and deprived suburbs where resentment smoulders.The same thing could have been written when Jacques Chirac became president in 1995 and the fact that so little has changed during his 12-year reign attests not just to his political failings but also to France’s long-standing aversion to reform.

All the three main candidates for the two-round election on April 22 and May 6 — conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, Socialist Segolene Royal and centrist Francois Bayrou <\m> are promising a clean break with the past and new solutions for the future.

But the sort of unpalatable labour and budget reforms that many analysts say are needed in France to create jobs and cut the debt mountain, do not make for election-winning manifestos.

And although jobs and purchasing power are the voters’ main concern, according to opinion polls, the focus of the campaign has drifted towards immigration, security, election reform, executive pay and the genetic make-up of paedophiles.

“These people aren’t talking about things that will get my friends jobs or make my life any better,” said 24-year-old Brahim Konate, from Corbeil Essonnes, a suburb south of Paris.

France at the end of the Chirac era is a land of paradoxes.

The nation’s high-speed rail network is the envy of the world and has just set a new speed record, 18 of the eurozones’s top 50 firms are based here and leading French companies paid out record dividends last year after chalking up record profits.

But the economy as a whole is not looking so rosy. France’s economic growth in 2006 was 2.1 percent against an average 2.7 percent in the euro zone and it registered a record trade deficit of 29.2 billion euros ($38.98 billion) last year, while the biggest long-term ill is clearly unemployment.

Some 8.8 percent of the workforce does not have a job, while youth unemployment is nearer 20 percent. Only some 58 percent of French adults work against 72 percent in Britain <\m> once the sick man of Europe but now wealthier than France.

Although the top candidates have promised to focus on jobs, many analysts say their proposals don’t go far enough, adding that other issues, such as a hugely expensive health service and a potential pensions timebomb, have barely been addressed. “The country seems torn between the rhetoric of reform and a profound propensity towards social conservatism,” Moody’s Investors Service wrote in a research note this month.

When Chirac won office in 1995, he tried to implement far-reaching reform, but was forced into retreat by street protests and made little attempt thereafter to enact change.

Sarkozy’s economic proposals, including encouraging overtime and cutting hefty social charges imposed on firms, have won him most plaudits from market analysts, but if, as polls predict, he wins the election, he will not enjoy any honeymoon period. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, Sarkozy has a divisive, hardline image in France and unions have warned they will battle core pledges, such as pegging back their own strike powers.

A Sarkozy victory might also exacerbate tensions in the high rise suburbs that ring French cities and are home to many of the country’s varied ethnic groups.

These ghettos still bare the scars of rioting in 2005, when Sarkozy denounced the troublemakers as “scum”, and the social ills that fuelled the discontent <\m> unemployment, discrimination and poor education <\m> remain unresolved.

Locals complain that their problems have been overlooked in the election campaign and an outbreak of violence following a simple ticket check at a Paris station last month showed just how disastrous relations between police and youth have become. Another issue that lacerated France in 2005 <\m> European integration <\m> has also received short shrift in the campaign.

Two years ago grumpy French voters rejected the European Constitution, raising a metaphorical finger at their ruling elite and throwing the 27-nation EU into a collective crisis.

All the frontrunners backed the constitution so have little to gain by raking over the ashes of the debacle, but the winner will have to confront the problem within weeks of taking office and reassure allies that France is still an EU leader.

Some analysts think French diffidence towards the outside world will fade once stubborn internal problems are resolved.

“We’re not in a desperate situation,” said Dominique David, executive director of IFRI. “French pessimism regarding the outside world will deflate as soon as the domestic policies are resolved <\m> the problem of unemployment and social cohesion.”