In her editorial for this Friday, April 22, Agnès Verdier-Molinié, director of the IFRAP foundation, discusses the programs of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, from an economic point of view.
This gives mixed results in the light of the period that we are going to live with the abyss of our public finances, inflation and rising debt rates. These subjects have been carefully swept under the rug and will jump out at us as soon as the election period is over. We know what to do: lower public spending and compulsory levies because France is the country that spends the most and taxes the most. But these last few days have been more the time of the checkbook and the waltz of costly and unfunded promises except to further increase taxes…
At Marine Le Pen the only real cuts in spending are the abolition of public channels and the national preference measures that she puts at 20 billion in savings, but nothing is less certain and at Emmanuel Macron, it is the postponement of the starting age at 65 for retirement, but we understood that not all employees would be affected – via hardship – so the savings are uncertain as are the 10 billion euros in savings on the financing of communities local… And this even though the increases in spending are very clear: reindexing of pensions, public hiring, investments in nuclear power, in security. As a result, at the end of the five-year term, public expenditure in relation to GDP did not fall either with Emmanuel Macron or with Marine le Pen compared to the reference trajectory. As for compulsory deductions, they increase a little bit with Emmanuel Macron and drop a little bit with Marine Le Pen.
Yes too high since the public deficit (that is to say what is not financed by public revenue) in billions would still be more than 80 billion with Emmanuel Macron’s program and 147 billion euros with the program of Marine Le Pen. And this is likely to worsen due to inflation with a heavier debt burden which will automatically worsen the public deficit. Equally worrying: France’s trade deficit would only improve marginally with an 85 billion trade deficit for Emmanuel Macron and 91 billion for Marine Le Pen.
The public debt (i.e. the addition of the accumulated deficits) will have increased by more than 600 billion in 5 years, including around 265 billion due to Covid. If we apply Emmanuel Macron’s program as it is (still the latest spending promises are not in it), it will still increase by 577 billion by 2027, as for the debt with Marine Le Pen’s program , it would be an increase of 785 billion… so nothing to be proud of! We will have to take out other measures such as the debt brake in the constitution to stop going into debt to pay the operating expenses of the State and Social Security. The real program may be in the pipeline, but it’s not on the table.