Breaking tradition, Sarkozy speaks to parliament

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy will lay out his vision for the nation Monday in a speech marking the first time a French president has addressed the parliament in 136 years.

The setting is fitting for a man leftist critics dub a new emperor: the Chateau of Versailles, home to the Sun King Louis XIV and other French royals.

More than 900 lawmakers from both houses of the legislature - the National Assembly and the Senate - gathered Monday morning for a joint session whose marquee event is Sarkozy's appearance in the afternoon.

The last presidential speech to France's parliament was in 1873, before lawmakers banned the practice to protect the separation of powers and keep the president in check.

The kinetic Sarkozy deemed the rule musty. He said soon after his 2007 election that a president should be able to "explain his actions and take stock of his results" once a year before parliament - in an appearance somewhat modeled on the U.S. president's State of the Union speech before Congress.

The French legislature, dominated by Sarkozy's conservative UMP party, approved the idea a year ago. Sarkozy will take the parliamentary stage Monday for the first time as president.

Many leftists remain opposed to the move, and 54 legislators from the Communist and ecological parties will boycott the speech. The main opposition lawmakers, from the Socialist Party, will attend the speech but boycott the ensuing debate.

Opponents accuse Sarkozy of being power-hungry and pushing through measures, such as changes to labor laws or opening up universities to private funding, without taking dissenting voices into account.

The daily Liberation ran a front-page cartoon of Sarkozy wearing a crown and sporting a jeweled staff, headlined "Nicolas II."

"The ego-president is entering in his preparation for 2012," when France holds its next presidential elections, said Socialist former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius.

Yet Sarkozy has opened up his government to leftists and centrists, and is expected to keep the cross-spectrum profile when he reshuffles his government later this week.

In Monday's speech, Sarkozy is expected to lay out the "grand lines" of how he sees France after the current economic crisis, according to his aides.

He's two years into his five-year term, and his record so far is mixed, with some foreign policy successes but some disappointed voters at home. Many conservatives are hoping he will use the speech to speed up or revive promised reforms to pensions and schools.

While jobs and the economy are likely to be central to the speech, he has also pledged to address growing debate about burqas and other full-body Muslim veils in France.

While each house of parliament is normally based in Paris, joint sessions are regularly held at Versailles, alongside the tourist-packed museum and resplendent royal grounds.

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Associated Press writer Laurent Pirot in Paris contributed to this report.