On Sunday, François Hollande's ruling socialists suffered a defeat without precedent in France's 2014 municipal elections (spoken about in all of Europe), leading to the opposition UMP becoming the nº1 party (on a town-hall level, at least, with the emergence of a new generation of right-leaning mayors, some under 40 years of age) and to the capture of several town halls by Marine Le Pen's Front National.
