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December 2, 2024 - 10:00am
France is on the brink. Days after the yields on French bonds rose above those on Greek bonds, it now appears that the government might collapse. Rassemblement National’s President, Jordan Bardella, said that his party is prepared to support a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Michel Barnier. At issue are pensions, with the government trying to impose de facto cuts by removing inflation indexation while Marine Le Pen’s party stands in opposition.
The real problem is that the Macron government has driven France toward bankruptcy. When Macron was first elected in 2017, he was portrayed as the solution to France’s and Europe’s problems, with the Economist famously heralding him as “Europe’s Saviour”. Macron was said to be an intelligent technocrat with a background in banking who could reform the French state and bolster the French economy.
Fast forward seven years and his policies, together with his cynical attempts to keep himself in power, are threatening to drive France’s Fifth Republic off a cliff. When Macron took power, government debt was around 98.5% of GDP. In 2023, it hit 110.6%. In 2017, France was running a budget deficit of around 3.4% of GDP while in 2023 this had risen to 5.5% of GDP.
There were two key drivers of this runaway spending. The first was the lockdowns imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, when the pandemic broke out, France’s deficit hit an eye-watering 8.9% of GDP. In the wake of the Ukraine war, France has been forced to engage in enormous energy subsidies, due to the sanctions imposed on Russia. The French Finance Ministry estimates that the subsidies cost around €45 billion in 2023. This amounts to 1.9% of GDP and explains most of the increase in the French deficit.
Curiously, Macron seems to want to pile on even more pressure on the state’s finances in furtherance of the war in Ukraine. In November, as French bond yields were rising, Macron gave the green light to allow French Scalp missiles to strike long-range targets inside Russia. Knowing that this would provoke a Russian response, the French Foreign Minister then gave signals that started a discussion of sending troops to Ukraine. It seems obvious that if France got directly involved in the war, the bond markets would panic, and the country would go bankrupt immediately.
What explains Macron’s strange behaviour? It appears that as he becomes increasingly isolated at home, and with his project for domestic reform crashing against the rocks, he has tried to recreate himself as an international statesman. This week, with the government near dissolution amid a fiscal crisis, the French President is heading to Saudi Arabia to try to get France more involved in the Middle East. These actions suggest that Macron was never the level-headed technocrat he was made out to be; rather, he appears to be a politician willing to take big gambles to try to bolster his own importance and secure his own legacy.
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SubscribePerfect summation of Macron the confabulist.
Pilkington’s contributions to this magazine just keep getting better.
Looking at the numbers macron and France have faired a lot better than canada and Trudeau.
Which planet does he look like now?
Uranus
Boom Boom!
Uranus
Pluto maybe? It used to be a planet and now it’s not.
M. Macron exhibits a curious form of psychological disposition related to “Napoleon Complex” or “Napoleon Syndrome”. I wonder if Macron looks in the mirror and asks himself “What would Napoleon do?” and then formulates his policy accordingly.
Macron is a sort of vainglorious, budget, Iago – inebriated with the exuberance of his own machinations. If he did look in a mirror he’d consider his own reflection as being insufficiently worthy.
A narcissistic megalomaniac with a Messiah complex.
France: don’t like this Republic? We have others…
France leads the way into welfare -state bankruptcy as other Western countries follow.
Is there anything Macron touches that isn’t a disaster? Sahel, New Caledonia, Caribbean, North Africa. But then at the first opposition, he caves. Gilets Jaunes, etc. Empty narcissist, taking Europe down too.
He’s simply a harbinger. The once vaunted brilliant “technocrats” across the West will begin to fall like dominoes as the U.S. finally wakes from its 50 year-old nightmare and begins a new chapter, which will energize the Right in many places. We might all not have to drown in a sea of DEI vomit after all.
I’d love to read a single article, just one, where Pilkington doesn’t blame the Russian sanctions for all the wests woes, many of which have been decades in the making!
Vive la 6eme republique. Only way forward thanks to this jumped up, petulant Napoleon wannabe.
Perhaps it is time for another revolution in France. They seem to enjoy them.
Firstly, French energy problems are a direct result of the irrational policies inspired by climate fanaticism.
Secondly, war mongering to profiteer off of defending a corrupt oligarchy being invaded by a corrupt tyrant is not a viable policy.
Thirdly, the results of taking anything pushed by Davos as wise policy advice should be plain to anyone.
The EU is an increasingly dangerous failure. Macron has no tools to resist the EU or Davos. His anti-democratic scheming will only get worse.