French Prime Minister Michel Barnier assured the Assembly on Tuesday that he wanted to bring the deficit below 3% of GDP in 2029, by involving “large companies” and the “most fortunate French people”, but he has a margin of narrow maneuvering in the absence of a majority.
Almost a month after his appointment by President Emmanuel Macron, the new head of government from the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) party, unfazed despite the uproar in the hemicycle, also addressed the issue in his general policy speech flammable issue of immigration “which we no longer control satisfactorily”. He announced a tightening of measures in France, like other European countries.
“The real sword of Damocles is our colossal financial debt […] which, if we are not careful, will place our country on the edge of the precipice,” he said, while France’s deficit risks reaching 6% of GDP this year, far from 3%. set by Brussels.
The new Prime Minister now intends to reach this threshold of 3% two years later than the deadline set by the previous government.
“The first remedy for debt is the reduction of expenditure” and the second “the efficiency of expenditure”, he insisted. The third remedy will be the most painful: fiscal leverage.
“Our taxes are among the highest in the world” but “the situation of our accounts today requires a limited effort over time which will have to be shared”, pleaded the head of government, referring to a participation requested “from large companies who make significant profits”, as well as “an exceptional contribution to the most fortunate French people”.
But the effort to reduce the debt will come in 2025 from “two thirds” of spending reductions, he assured.
Michel Barnier’s room for maneuver is very narrow. The country’s explosive financial situation adds to the lack of a majority in the Assembly.
And his allies in the Macronist bloc urge him not to unravel the policy, particularly of tax relief, carried out for seven years.
“Many of us will not be able to support a government that would increase taxes,” warned Sunday the former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, excluded from the government.
“Better control our borders”
The recent early legislative elections in France, called by President Macron after the dismal failure of his party in the European elections at the beginning of June, resulted in an Assembly fragmented into three irreconcilable blocs: the left, whose coalition came first in the elections but which Absent from the government is the Macronist center right and the far right of Marine Le Pen.
The National Rally of Marine Le Pen, the party with the most deputies, finds itself in the position of arbiter.
The pressure is enormous for the new executive: while the far right has put it “under surveillance” and can bring it down at any time by voting for a motion of censure from the left, the latter has promised to table one. starting this week.
In an attempt to satisfy the left wing, and as a first response to the thousands of people who demonstrated on Tuesday in France, at the call of several unions, for the government to “respond to social demands”, the Prime Minister announced that he would extend the hand to the social partners to discuss in particular pensions, the reform of which in 2023 has provoked a vast movement of popular protest.
Mr. Barnier also mentioned the “ecological debt”, confirming the continued development of nuclear power “but also of renewable energies”.
At the same time, on immigration, the battlehorse of the right and the far right, Michel Barnier announced that he wanted to “better control our borders” and facilitate “the exceptional extension of the detention of foreigners in an irregular situation, to better execute the obligations to leave French territory (OQTF)”.
He also affirmed that he would not prohibit the reduction of visas for countries reluctant to take back their nationals, and promised to be “ruthless” with migrant smugglers in the Mediterranean or in the Channel, where deadly shipwrecks are increasing these days. recent years.
These comments echo those of his Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau, a supporter of a hard line, and who, barely named, has generated several controversies, notably asserting that “immigration is not an opportunity”.
Insufficient for Marine Le Pen, who immediately demanded in the chamber that the government present a new immigration law at the beginning of 2025, taking up the measures censored by the Constitutional Council in January.