A few days before the first round, there is something surreal in this presidential campaign. Last Saturday, for more than two hours in his one and only campaign rally, President Emmanuel Macron, who leads in the polls, spent half the time lining up a long list of new spending and tax cuts. A few days earlier, in Moselle, the one who is hot on his heels in the second round, the candidate of the populist right Marine Le Pen, was doing exactly the same thing. In Toulouse, the third man in this ballot, the representative of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was obviously not left out.
“All of them shared in promises of additional spending or tax cuts without ever asking the question of sustainability for public finances and for the debt of their program”, says Nicolas Baverez, essayist and columnist for the weekly Point. A disciple of Tocqueville and Raymond Aron, Baverez notes, however, that after the crises of the Yellow Vests, COVID-19 and Ukraine, France is one of the countries which has experienced a real economic downgrade for five years.
“We have long been considered, economically, as a country halfway between Northern Europe and Southern Europe,” he says. We are now clearly part of Southern Europe. »
“Whatever it Takes”
Of this, the candidates do not seem to be aware. Not only has France’s economic stall that began in the 1980s not slowed down, it could accelerate, explains Baverez. “After the “whatever the cost” applied to the pandemic, one has the impression that there is a tacit consensus in France for this to continue with the war in Ukraine. This is a serious mistake because, behind this war, we see the emergence of a new economic regime which will be much tougher. »
With an abysmal debt which reaches 113% of its GDP and an external account deficit of 85 billion euros in 2021, France risks being the first victim. “For the debt to remain sustainable, growth must remain higher than interest rates. However, we are entering a structure of stagflation. The growth will return between 0 and 1%. As for interest rates, they will go up. Like in the United States. »
A dark diagnosis that contrasts with the tone that Emmanuel Macron displayed last Saturday at La Défense, in his one and only electoral assembly. Didn’t the president welcome the drop in unemployment and a record growth rate since 1969?
Simple compensatory effect, believes Baverez. “In 1969, France was not emerging from an 8% recession! But this dynamic of catching up will be telescoped head-on by the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine. Beneath this appearance of performance, the ills and structural difficulties of the French economy can only worsen. »
How to explain that a president elected in 2017 to reform France around what he then called “happy passions” and who intended to “mobilize civil society” with a strategy “both right and left” could have come to this the ? “Faced with such large shocks that follow one another, the “at the same time” strategy cannot work to manage crises. In times of crisis, we need a course and a clear line. This quinquennium has been overtaken by history. »
Five years later, Nicolas Baverez notes that “whatever the cost” has been one of the lines of continuity of this presidency. To calm the Yellow Vests, the government has extended no less than 17 billion euros. France is also the European country that spent the most during the health crisis. Result: at the end of 2021, German public debt was only 70% of GDP against 113% in France. Faced with the increase in household costs since the war in Ukraine, the response has not changed.
Like Italy in 2011?
“This is the hidden face of this campaign. Today, the problem is very concrete. Debt is at 113% of GDP, public spending is at 56%. Compulsory deductions are at 45%. How, from there, can we reinvest in health, education, police and justice, rearm and manage the climate transition? All of this is supposed to be done with public money. In the years to come, France could very well find itself in the same crisis situation as Italy in 2011.
Nicolas Baverez describes a country locked in a vicious circle. The more it spends, the less it manages to limit the fractures in society, which are manifested in particular by the explosion of violence against the person. There is a deep reason for this, he believes. “It’s because inequalities in France are not primarily inequalities of income, but inequalities of status. The downgrading of part of the population is linked to the collapse of education and public services, not to a lack of social assistance. The revolt of the Yellow Vests was a revolt against downgrading. »
Emmanuel Macron had he not campaigned for a better involvement of civil society? “However, we have never had such concentrated power,” said Baverez. Macron has completely cut himself off from civil society, elected officials and territories. This absence of campaign is very revealing of a lonely and weightless presidency. »
This does not prevent the President from congratulating himself on a certain awakening of Europe on themes which he himself has supported. “The paradox is that it is not at all French diplomacy that obtained this. It was the pandemic that moved Germany and Northern Europe on the mutualization of debts and the recovery program. As for the second awakening, that of energy independence and the need to rearm, the credit goes to Vladimir Putin, not to Emmanuel Macron. »
What legitimacy?
Moreover, Nicolas Baverez fears that this German rearmament will deprive France of one of its rare prerogatives in Europe. “The German army will quickly have a budget which will be twice that of France. It will once again become an operational and powerful army by 2030. What remained an advantage for France, particularly vis-à-vis the United States, risks disappearing. »
These prospects contrast radically with the optimistic climate of the electoral assemblies. “We are going towards a five-year term which will be very difficult, said Baverez. If Emmanuel Macron is re-elected, he will have a much more fragile base of legitimacy due to this non-campaign and an abstention which could be massive. Much will depend on the post-presidential period. He will have to profoundly change his conception of the practice of power. If it remains in a very centralized and technocratic conception, the difficulties will arrive very quickly. There will be no state of grace. »
A few days before the first round, analysts are increasingly talking about the 1981 scenario. While everyone was convinced of his re-election, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had been beaten by François Mitterrand. And this, even if his adversaries did not hesitate to predict the arrival of Russian tanks on the Champs-Élysées.
“Marine Le Pen’s victory today is no longer impossible, because of the liabilities that Macron has allowed to accumulate and his non-campaign. It would be a major shock for France, but also for Europe. And the height for a president who was to represent a brake on populism after the election of Donald Trump… ”estimates Baverez.