It is Michel Houellebecq who writes it. “In real political life, at least in the reactor core, Bruno was more or less an outsider. » Bruno Juge, character from his latest novel, Annihilateand fictional double of the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, is “a good guy” who has “the confidence of the president”and appears “best placed” to succeed him. The problem is that people don’t like it. They find it ” competent “, ” worker ” And ” integrated “but not ” warm “ Or “empathetic”. Moreover, the president, who plans to return to power five years later, is wary of it.
In real life, Bruno Le Maire, for seven years at Bercy, says he doesn’t think about what’s next. His latest work, The French Way, published on March 20, the sixth since 2017, was nevertheless immediately read as a profession of faith for 2027. Shorter than the previous ones, this political essay talks about the economy, sovereignty and public finances, but also ecology, of the fight against drugs, institutional reforms, secularism, and the practice of power. Necessary reforms to “finish the job” and avoid “an electoral failure in 2027”. But also major projects intended to ward off this “declassification” which obsesses France, “never satisfied with her destiny”.
“When I made a program book, it was over a thousand pages”, the minister defended himself on France Inter on March 18, swearing that he was a minister and not a candidate. In fact, the avenues mentioned have, for many of them, already been formulated by the person concerned in recent months. They are part of the Macronian software centered on work and reforms to free the “forces of the economy”, even if they go further for some. “Pompidou, after de Gaulle, did not seek to write history, it had been made by his predecessor”he writes.
“Replace the welfare state with the protective state”
To achieve full employment, it intends to entrust the management of unemployment insurance to the State rather than to social partners. Review the indexation of the minimum wage to inflation to recreate a salary dynamic more linked to productivity. Consider creating a share of capitalization to finance pensions in the face of demographic aging. Focus the health system on “the most vulnerable and the elderly” rather than the” open bar “ current. And rethink the financing of the French social model, by transferring it more towards VAT, a tax paid by everyone, rather than levies on work.
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