It is always useful to know what happens in France. Not only because the wind blowing from Paris often ends up getting to us too. But because the country of the Alps, for better or for worse, still remains the political and social laboratory of the old continent. And today that laboratory risks exploding, struggling with a necessary horse care, according to his doctor, to avoid “the curse of the debt”. With these words, Prime Minister François Bayrou presented the most severe austerity plan of the fifth republic: 43.8 billion euros to be cut, a whole year of frozen public spending (the so -called Année Blanche) and, as a symbol of the turning point, the suppression of two national holidays: on Easter Monday and 8 May, the day of victory over Nazism. France is now “the patient of Europe”, with a debt equal to 114% of GDP, worse than the other two countries of the “Club Med” Italy and Spain. “The state is in reserved prognosis,” Bayrou said. The goal? Descending from 5.4% of deficit in 2025 to 4.6 in 2006 to 2.8% in 2029. The new “Plain Budgétaire” is a message to Europe and investors: the state does not intend to end up in the sights of the markets.
But the price to pay risks being very high. Touching the memory of the liberation for the French is like snatching the flag of April 25 by us: a symbolic suicide. And in fact they all rebelled: from the Gauche di Mélenchon to the right of Marine Le Pen and of course the unions, who already polish the whistles in view of the autumn Renthrée.
THE’Homme du Milieuman of the vehicle, as he is called for his political centrism, currently pulls straight, with his sad and a little equine face by Commissioner Maigret. The maneuver provides for drastic measures: greater rates, no adaptation to inflation for pensions and social contributions. One out of three public employee will not be replaced. Five billion will be cut to healthcare, also close on unemployment and doubling allowances of the franchise on medicines.
Choc therapy promises to “stop the decline” and suffer from the historical moment. The defense, in fact, does not touch. Indeed, military spending will grow by 3.5 billion a year. It is one of the few voices increasing, in the sign of the Macron doctrine who, after the speech of July 13, put the “threats against freedoms” in the center of the strategic agenda.
The scene, inside the French semi -presidential system shaving the paradox. President Macron, who owes the increase in seven years of 1000 billion deficits, prefers that Prime Minister Bayrou to remove chestnuts from the fire and shows a certain disinterest towards the situation, apart from a bland and pilate formal support (“if others have more intelligent ideas, they come forward”). The Elisian tenant, the former banker who became president, delegates the ungrateful task of the Draconian cuts to his Prime Minister, the ancient professor of classical letters of a high school of the Pyrenees, the passionate humanist of Henry IV, that of the famous “Paris Val a Mass”. But in this case the mass is over and the faithful, before going out, will have to leave substantial offers on the collector’s plate.
Autumn will be fiery. Without a stable majority and the short breath on the neck of the oppositions, Bayrou will remain alone. And the vote of the National Assembly on the Budget Law 2026 could become the terminus of his government. For many people, in fact, these are only the umpteenth chapter of a one -way austerity, where they always pay the same. And where, once again, everything is cut except what is needed to make war. The French could withdraw their yellow vests outside. After all, they put half a country on fire for much less: the increase in the old -age pension from 62 to 64 years.
Francesco Anfossi
