Since the announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly by Emmanuel Macron on June 9, France seems to have entered a parallel world. Prior to this political bombshell, the debate focused on the extent of the savings needed for the challenging 2025 budget, but the prospect of legislative elections and a potential change in majority has completely uninhibited political parties in terms of budgetary context. Both opposition parties and the majority have engaged in a spending spree, as if Macron’s gamble had magically erased the country’s financial commitments.
Looking at the emerging program snippets, particularly due to the rushed nature of these legislative elections, it seems as though the country suddenly has unsuspected room to solve the French people’s problems. The disconnect between the promises made by various parties and the reality of the public accounts is striking. France has a budget deficit of 5.5% of GDP, will need to borrow nearly 300 billion euros from financial markets in 2024, and the total debt stands at 3,200 billion euros, with interest payments exceeding 52 billion euros. Despite these unprecedented figures, the various party lists continue to propose unfunded spending programs in the hundreds of billions of euros.
The European Commission played spoilsport on June 19 by announcing its intention to open a procedure for excessive deficit against France. While the country is accompanied by six others in this budgetary purgatory, the current pre-election excitement may worsen an already problematic situation. The far right finds itself trapped by the comfortable positions it has adopted in recent years when power seemed like a distant possibility. Even with amendments from its leaders’ daily flip-flops, the RN’s program remains incompatible with the European framework, both regulatory and budgetary. The political project of the New Popular Front is not related to that of the far right, but its Keynesian revival also raises questions about its costs, which vary significantly depending on the alliance’s different components and the assumptions in the common program.
As for the presidential majority, which has been claiming for months that the “whatever it takes” policy is over and that it’s time for savings, it still finds ways to propose new expenses with these elections. The government’s credibility in this regard had already been damaged in recent months, particularly by its poor assessment of the growth slowdown that led it to overestimate tax revenues by 21 billion euros in 2023, derailing the trajectory with a much heavier deficit than expected. This spending spree is not a sign of the good health of our democracy. It leaves voters feeling like they are being taken for fools and projects a disastrous image of the country within the European Union. One cannot claim to be attached to Europe while presenting programs that flout its rules. These unlimited expenses reveal an inability to think about political action outside of a “more and more” mentality that has clearly failed to make the country more prosperous and the French people happier. This disconnected France can only fuel frustration and resentment.
