In April and May 2012, France held a presidential election in which the winner, François Hollande, had opposed austerity measures, promising to eliminate France's budget deficit by 2017 by canceling recently enacted tax cuts and exemptions for the wealthy, raising the top tax bracket rate to 75% on incomes over one million euros, restoring the retirement age to 60 with a full pension for those who have worked 42 years, restoring 60,000 jobs recently cut from public education, regulating rent increases, and building additional public housing for the poor. In the legislative elections in June, Hollande's Socialist Party won a supermajority capable of amending the French Constitution and enabling the immediate enactment of the promised reforms. Interest rates on French government bonds fell by 30% to record lows, fewer than 50 basis points above German government bond rates.