French interim Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire warned on Monday (8) of the risk of a “financial crisis” and “economic decline” if the far-left New Popular Front (NFP) takes power and implements its electoral program.
“Implementing the NFP’s separatist program would destroy the results of the policy we have followed for seven years and which has given France jobs, attractiveness and factories,” Le Maire wrote in a message on his X social media account.
In the minister’s opinion, this is an “exorbitant, ineffective and outdated” project that also has “weak and circumstantial” legitimacy.
The reaction of the man who has been, in practice, the “number two” of all the governments that French President Emmanuel Macron has had since his arrival at the Elysee Palace in 2017 comes after the left-wing coalition reached this Sunday (7), the largest number of representatives in the National Assembly, with 182 deputies.
While that is far short of the 289 seats that constitute the minimum for an absolute majority, the four parties that make up the coalition have called on Macron to name as prime minister the person they nominate this week for finishing in first place.
The economic program includes a more than 14% increase in the minimum wage to 1,600 euros net per month, a 10% increase in public sector salaries, a freeze on basic prices, the cancellation of Macron’s pension reform and a massive increase in public spending of 100 billion euros next year and 150 billion per year until 2027.
This would be financed by taxes on the rich, in particular by reinstating the Wealth Tax (ISF), which Macron abolished at the start of his term, and by higher taxes on corporations and capital gains.
The call for early legislative elections in France following the European elections on 9 June, in which the nationalist right won a resounding victory, generated tensions in the markets in the following days, which resulted in falls in the stock market, especially in banking sector shares, and an increase in the French risk premium.
Tensions eased when the scenarios of a victory by the left with an absolute majority and then by the nationalist right were discarded.
Le Maire also warned of the risk of an “ideological fracture” in the country, which could lead to “collective exhaustion”, and stressed that, to avoid this, it is necessary to provide “responses to the anger and legitimate concerns” of the 10 million voters of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN).
The Economy Minister, who is part of the right wing of Macronism, said that, in the current situation of dispersion in the National Assembly, “coherence and lucidity” and “a return to reality” are necessary, because “France cannot be a spectator” of the movements that the world is experiencing.
“All political forces that believe in the market economy, in the restoration of public finances, in the energy transition, in European construction and in the impeccable restoration of state authority must step outside their partisan interests to continue the indispensable transformation of our economic and social model and to affirm our potential,” he said.
#French #minister #exposes #risk #economic #decline #left