English translation
Presidential campaign
Marine Le Pen’s budget programme under scrutiny
DOUBTS
By presenting her five-year fiscal path, the RN candidate aims to reassure markets and investors in the event of victory in 2027
How do you distinguish an opposition party from a party ready to govern? The former merely attacks the government. The latter envisages exercising power. By presenting its fiscal path for 2027 to 2032, the National Rally places itself in the second category. On Tuesday, Marine Le Pen outlined the measures and results expected if she wins in May. The objective: to bring the public deficit down to 3% within eighteen months. Then, through €140 billion in savings and around a hundred proposals, to reduce debt to 112% of GDP within five years. “We are the only ones to come out with such a comprehensive plan,” says Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the RN’s economics spokesman, with satisfaction.
The free-market economists who have assessed it acknowledge the party’s transformation. “Their determination to reduce the public deficit is positive. They have understood the extreme seriousness of the situation,” says Olivier Babeau, president of the Institut Sapiens. “Marine Le Pen is trying to play the responsibility card,” agrees Anthony Morlet-Lavidalie, an economist at Rexecode. He notes that the four-time presidential candidate “takes the opposite approach to the radical left by paying attention to what the market is saying.” Marine Le Pen knows she will face close scrutiny. With only a few months to go before her possible arrival at the Élysée Palace, France is borrowing at record interest rates. And with an unworkable fiscal path, a financial crisis would be inevitable, leading to intervention by the ECB that would necessarily be painful for the French people.
Nevertheless, specialists are not entirely reassured. “One gets the impression that the RN, like all the other parties, underestimates the cost of its spending and overestimates its savings,” explains Olivier Babeau. The economist struggles, for example, to believe in the €11 billion in savings promised from 2027 through a reduction in France’s contribution to the European Union: such a reduction would first require negotiations with the other member states. The same applies to the abolition of agencies. Such measures have often been announced in the past but rarely implemented. The RN hopes to save €10 billion annually in this area once the measures are fully in place. “That overlooks the fact that most employees in these bodies are civil servants, whose costs will still have to be borne, whether they are reassigned or, in the case of contract staff, dismissed,” points out Alain Trannoy, a professor at EHESS.
Other measures are raising eyebrows, starting with pension reform. The National Rally proposes returning the retirement age to 62, or even 60 for some people. The cost: €9 billion. In the longer term, following some adjustments to the system, the party estimates savings of between €15 billion and €20 billion. That is impossible, according to Nicolas Bouzou, founder of the consultancy Asterès, who criticises “insufficiently documented work.” The party points to a press conference in November, when Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella will outline their reform. This does little to reassure public finance specialist François Ecalle, who does not understand the RN’s insistence on a retirement age of 62: “We can discuss the arrangements—a points-based pension system, a system based on years of contributions, funded pensions—but we cannot avoid raising the actual retirement age.”
The founder of the Fipeco website also considers the projected €32 billion in savings from tackling fraud to be “greatly exaggerated.” Jean-Philippe Tanguy regards these criticisms as unfair and denounces a “form of hysteria” among economists whenever the RN is involved. Citing several reports, particularly those from INSEE, the MP claims, for example, that VAT fraud amounts to at least €40 billion. He also disputes the views of experts who predict a recessionary effect from the planned cuts in public spending: “This is a distortion of Keynesianism. Our recessionary measures are more than offset by those that promote growth.”
Several National Rally proposals nevertheless move in the right direction, according to the essayist Nicolas Bouzou, including cuts to taxes on production, reform of public procurement and a fiscal golden rule. These are all measures that could reassure investors. Olivier Babeau does not expect markets to panic if Marine Le Pen comes to power: “They would wait to see the savings materialise. The 2028 budget will be the decisive test.”
France through the eyes of its neighbours
Is it too much to ask France to bring its spending into line with European standards? “Yes, apparently,” says Alberto Toscano with a smile. Based in Paris since 1986, this most French of Italian journalists remains astonished by successive governments’ casual attitude towards debt. “France indulges in the luxury of turning a blind eye to the sickness of its public finances, but sooner or later it will catch up with the country,” he warns. While stopping short of envisaging a Greek-style scenario, since “this country is too big to fail,” he nevertheless anticipates painful measures to restore the public finances. His French-Swiss colleague Richard Werly agrees. In his view, it is entirely conceivable that France, faced with an unsustainable interest burden, could be forced to seek a credit line from the European Central Bank in exchange for tough structural reforms. Belgium, too, is watching the deterioration of France’s public finances with concern. Faced with the wall of debt and the demographic shock ahead, the delays and hesitation surrounding pension reform appear “incomprehensible” to Dorian de Meeûs, editor-in-chief of La Libre. All the more so because, in neighbouring Belgium, the statutory retirement age is already 66 and will rise to 67 in 2030. “It gives the impression of a country incapable of reform,” he laments. A perception, unfortunately, widely shared across Europe.