(Updated with quotes at the end of the dispatch)
PARIS, October 26 (Reuters) – In the “storm” of inflation, Emmanuel Macron recalled on Wednesday his concern to protect the weakest French people and to help industry, while saying he was opposed to the freezing of prices and wage indexation.
“Today we are going through inflation which is the consequence of our dependence (but) we have mastered it better than many of our neighbors”, he declared on France 2, recalling that inflation was half in France. lower than in many European countries.
“We are going through this crisis and basically we have to get through this storm, that’s the first thing I tell them and we’re going to get through it together,” he added.
“We protect the weakest, we help our industry, we protect more than our friends”, he summed up, citing the students, for whom the support systems will be “expanded”, and the most modest workers in the number people to help first.
The Head of State spoke out against indexing wages to inflation, which he said would amount to “maintaining the rise in prices” and creating “a loop that never stops”, while inviting companies to make wage agreements.
“Wage increases are not decided by the state,” he said. “We are not an administered economy and therefore I am in favor of there being a social negotiation in companies which allows, when things are going well, when the cycle is good, to increase wages and share the value”.
Emmanuel Macron also announced the forthcoming organization of a “major conference on value sharing”.
Asked about the course of his second five-year term, the head of state re-elected in April said he was determined to help the country overcome the inflationary crisis linked to the war in Ukraine.
“We are going to get there, but to do what? To have a stronger country in terms of production, science, education in order to be fairer and to finance our social model which is a strength. This is what will allow us to ‘to have a more united and peaceful country’.
“That’s my goal: a stronger France to be fairer and more peaceful. There will be no other,” he concluded. (Report Elizabeth Pineau, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)