PFor the French economic elites, the vagueness of the National Rally (RN) program will lead, if it reaches Matignon, to an economic policy “à la Meloni”: liberal and expurgated of projects that they consider “dangerous”. The parallel with the leader of the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party who became president of the Council of Ministers in Italy in October 2022 is indeed tempting, but omits an essential element.
The day after Giorgia Meloni’s accession to the Chigi Palace, Emmanuel Macron is the first foreign leader to meet her. This diplomatic dubbing was accompanied by a tweet from the French president that was reassuring at the time, but now troubling in the context of the rise of the far right: “To succeed together, with dialogue and ambition, we owe it to our youth and our people. Our first meeting in Rome goes in this direction. » The following three days, the Milan Stock Exchange rose by 4%…
The rump partner from the traditional right – in Italy, Forza Italia – would be the guarantor of the “return to reason”. Meloni’s promise to return to the extension of the retirement age was thus buried – just like the firm commitment of the RN as soon as the agreement signed with Eric Ciotti. The threat of a tax on the superprofits of transalpine banks has transformed into a harmless device.
Financial perfusion
On the other hand, the measures responding to the “neoliberal” breviary have been maintained. Corporate taxes have been reduced, like the commitments of the RN; a “flat tax” has been introduced to reward entrepreneurs, the core electorate of the Meloni coalition. Contributions and taxation on work have been reduced. The RN version is a salary increase at the discretion of private employers up to 10% without employer social security contributions. Replacing the increases negotiated with unions in companies or by sector, these measures ultimately result in a reduction in the cost of labor to the detriment of Social Security and the State. In total, in Italian companies, real gross salaries remain 5% to 10% below their pre-Covid-19 level. Civil servants, for their part, have been forgotten.
To balance the budget, the reduction in subsidies to associations and NGOs planned by the RN program was effective in Italy; the privatization of French public broadcasting echoes that of the Italian post office. The two far-right coalitions highlight the fight against fraud without giving agents the means to stem it. The RN, however, has not yet followed in the suppression of the Italian equivalent of the RSA.
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