Can New Prime Minister Deliver 'Changement'? --- Prime Minister Manuel Valls' job is to save François Hollande's presidency. The new government has committed to some changes. But will it push through the painful reforms the country needs or will it chart a political collision course with Brussels? --- With his deep voice, prominent chin and black hair, Manuel Valls is a man who exudes an aura of authority. As France's new prime minister, it's an authority he will also have to put to the test. -- Valls, 51, is the Socialist Party's last hope. His problem is that many members of his party don't consider the son of a Catalan painter and a Swiss woman, who only became a French citizen at age 20, to be a true Socialist. At best, he's seen as a right-wing Social Democrat, if not Nicolas Sarkozy reincarnated. -- It's no surprise: Valls, after all, once stunned his party by stating that it should remove the word "socialist" from its name, because "it doesn't mean anything anymore." When he ran in the 2011 internal party primary, he advocated "unlocking the 35-hour work week" and a lowering of payroll taxes. He didn't even make it to 6 percent. He later became a popular interior minister by focusing on law and order -- targeting the Roma to the approval of the majority of the French public and the dismay of the left-wing establishment. -- Only two years ago, right after François Hollande's election as president, it was barely imaginable that Manuel Valls would someday become the prime minister of a Socialist government. But the president had no other option left: He had to appoint Valls out of sheer necessity. Although Hollande's popularity was recently pegged at 25 percent, 61 percent of voters approved of his selection of Valls. - More, Mathieu von Rohr in Paris - Der Spiegel, at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/french-prime-minister-manuel-valls-faces-tough-job-in-shadow-of-president-a-963271.html