If you’re a French Socialist, that headline in La Matin reads better from the Anglophone side of the brain. For everybody else in France, it’s the apparent truth: After yesterday’s first round of voting in legislative elections, Sarkozy’s UMP looks likely to gain a massive victory when the final round is held next Sunday, with the Socialists losing more than half their seats. The quote of the day is from losing Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal (via Bloomberg): “Something is wrong.”

Meanwhile, in Belgium, conservative gains have forced the Liberal-Socialist government of Guy Verhofstadt into unemployment, according the The Guardian, another defeat for the left–although given the eccentricities of Belgian politics, it’s hard to imagine anyone actually “winning” there.