They are under more pressure than ever to engage with companies, says Jean-Nicolas Caprasse, the director of ISS Europe, which advises them on how to vote.
So sensitive is the matter that Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the French prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, his finance minister, postponed a meeting on industrial policy this week with their German counterparts.
He drew convincingly as Andrea Mantegna and Nicolas Poussin, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Peter Paul Rubens, Thomas Gainsborough and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.