“Do you hear in the countryside / Our fierce soldiers roaring? They come into your arms / Give birth to sons and impregnate their mate. »
Ah! It’s hard not to reinvent The Marseillaise by listening to Emmanuel Macron’s last press conference! A political spectacle with nationalist overtones for which the French president conscripted the major television channels and the attention of nearly nine million of his fellow citizens on Tuesday.
What was it about? To ensure that “France remains France” thanks, in particular, to a “demographic rearmament” plan.
The military formula used did not fail to capture the imagination and raise the ire of many French feminists. Especially since it is a question here of promoting the rise in the birth rate in France to replenish the ranks of French citizens, who, if we are to believe another part of the speech, will henceforth learn the national anthem and respect for the Republic on school benches.
Many activists and politicians noted that they had no lessons in reproduction to receive from a 46-year-old president who has no children.
It feels like the aftermath of the Second World War, when General de Gaulle said that France – decimated by the conflict – needed “12 million beautiful babies” in 10 years. “The lack of men and the low French birth rate are the root cause of our misfortunes… And the main obstacle to our recovery,” the French president said at the time.
We heard the same speech in Joseph Stalin’s Russia and elsewhere in post-war Europe which was recovering from the deaths of 60 million people in the space of 6 years. Quickly, have babies, the future of your country depends on it! The response was beyond expectations. In France, the baby boom lasted from 1946 to the 1970s.
But what scourge does France need to recover from exactly at the start of 2024?
President Macron based his speech on statistics published the same day by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). France gave birth to 678,000 babies last year, or 6% less than in 2022 and 20% less than in 2010, notes INSEE.
To counter this decline, what does the native rearmament engineer propose? “Birth leave”, which is another name for shorter and better paid parental leave that would be shared equally by both parents, as well as measures to combat infertility, which, in France as elsewhere in the world, affects a person in six.
Not exactly retrograde measures…
We are not near a contradiction in this speech by Emmanuel Macron, who, through the words chosen, seemed to address the conservative wing of the country – even the supporters of the National Rally of the Radical Right – while proposing measures similar to those put forward by social democratic governments.
Because, one thing is certain, France is not the only one to worry about its fertility rate, or the number of children per woman aged 15 to 50. The phenomenon is global. A United Nations report on the issue shows that if, in 1986, only 19 countries had policies to encourage a greater number of births, this number had risen to 55 in 2019. And continues to rise.
Moreover, we are talking about a fertility crisis which mainly affects rich countries, but which is quickly spreading to much less fortunate countries.
Among the most affected, we find Japan, Spain, Singapore and Italy as well as Bosnia, Mauritius, Puerto Rico and Ukraine. In all these countries, the fertility rate is less than 1.3 children per woman while the replacement rate is 2.1. Canada is not in a much better position with a fertility rate that is below 1.5.
And France in all this? Well, the country is doing better than all rich countries with a fertility rate of 1.68 in 2023. Yes, it is less than the 1.79 of 2022, but by comparing itself, France could d First and foremost, console yourself. Even give yourself a pat on the back.
And this is where we need to talk about the blue-white-red elephant in the room. Emmanuel Macron’s speech only talked about new babies made in France to face the immense challenge of the aging population. No immigration, a theme that upsets a large part of the French electorate, but which, combined with healthy family policies, is essential to solving the puzzle of demographic issues. In his editorial in response to the presidential speech, The world advocates for “calibrated immigration” rather than placing the burden solely on the shoulders of families.
But, it seems, that doesn’t fit very well with Macron’s version of “rearmament”.