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The French will elect the President of the Republic in April. The favorite is current President Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking his re-election. What explains that despite the criticism he has up to ten points ahead of his closest opponent? Ian Vidal, a member of ATTAC, the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Citizen Action, makes a critical assessment of the five-year period in the social field.
President Emmanuel Macron is accused of being the “president of the rich” by his opposition. The book ‘Macron, let’s take stock’, written by 24 specialists from the ATTAC organization, makes a detailed balance of the president’s action on issues such as education, health, culture, work, poverty, unemployment or taxation.
“Macron said he was neither left nor right; he promised to lower taxes and at the same time develop social policies. He ended up being the candidate of the rich because with him inequalities increased by reducing social aid”, says the ATTAC representative.
“We are experiencing a great social and ecological emergency, but steps forward were not taken, steps were taken backwards. Taxes on great wealth were lowered, the wealth tax was abolished, and a reform was also made on financial assets that cost the State a lot of money. To compensate for this, the aid for renting apartments for humble people, for example, was lowered, ”explains Ian Vidal.
ATTAC criticizes the labor and unemployment reforms approved during the Macron presidency. However, it cannot be denied that there was an increase in employment; specifically, between the end of 2017 and the end of 2021, one million new jobs were created.
Vidal considers that before there was a favorable trend for job creation since 2015, which came not so much from the reforms as from an economic situation that had improved. He also recalls that “in five years, 150,000 million euros were spent to create jobs, but as the France Strategy association, linked to the Government, notes, these reforms are not the origin of job creation in a notable way. We spend a lot of money with few employment benefits, at the end of the day.”
One of the most critical moments of the Macron Presidency was the crisis of the ‘Yellow Vests’, the protest of thousands of French people, mainly living in peri-urban areas that shook the country from November 2018 and lasted until the first part of the 2019. Based on this movement, in 2019, the Government approved a reduction of 5,000 million euros in taxes for lower-income families, the carbon tax was frozen, and the activity premium was increased, among other decisions.
Ian Vidal estimates that more than having resolved the crisis, the government repressed the movement. Regarding the reduction of taxes “the problem is not so much that these reductions helped the most humble, what we criticize is that the indiscriminate aid from the Government favored the richest”, he justifies.
ATTAC recognizes that during the pandemic crisis (2020-2021) “the Government supported employment and at the same time aid was given, we obviously see that in a positive way. The problem is that many of these aids do not have a counterweight, they are open aid and without a requirement as compensation.
What worries the association, which militates to impose more substantially the income of the most advantaged, is the consequence “whatever it takes” defended by the president. “How much is it going to cost and who is going to pay the cost?” asks Ian Vidal.
“The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have made the French look for stability. The problem is that citizens no longer have confidence in politics and that many will not go to vote”, he concludes.
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