Where to make savings? This is the question that is currently agitating the small political and media circles. Barely appointed, the Ministers of Economy and Public Accounts will have to get down to finalizing the thorny 2025 budget, the examination of which in Parliament must begin no later than 1er October, for promulgation on 1er next January. So we urgently need to find our money and everyone has their own little idea on the subject.
Questioned on Friday, September 20, on RMC StorySarah Knafo provided some leads. “It’s a subject that fascinates me. I was a magistrate at the Court of Auditors, it was my job to pin down ministries and see where there was spendingthus began the MEP. Do you know, for example, that we give 800 million euros to Algeria in official development aid? Do you know that we give, each year, 120 million euros in development aid to China, that is to say to the leading economic power in the world? We help it to develop while we are in the process of making appeals for donations to finance scanners at the Georges-Pompidou hospital.
Sarah Knafo couldn’t be more right. Our country is indeed extremely generous towards certain countries, particularly those located south of the Mediterranean. While Africa already accounted for more than half of official development assistance (ODA), or 4.4 billion dollars per year, Emmanuel Macron committed from the start of his term to do even “better” and redoubled his efforts to spend taxpayers’ money: 1 billion euros for African SMEs in 2017, 1.4 billion for the Abidjan metro in 2018, 135 million for African women entrepreneurs in 2019, 120 million for the development of Niger in 2022, 1 billion for the decarbonization of South Africa in 2022, 100 million for the development of digital technology in Nigeria in 2024… So much money that our derelict public services would desperately need.
Postcolonial debt
How can we explain this incredible altruism? The Reconquête MP sees it as the fruit of an outdated, outdated system of thought. “France still believes that it is in its role of the 1960s to go and help the emerging powers of the whole world, but it has not understood that China is no longer an emerging power, but the leading economy in the world.” This is certainly true. Perhaps it is also permissible to see in this the behaviour of a country driven by an immense sense of guilt?
Since the end of the 19th centurye century, the Westerner is convinced that he is responsible for the destiny of humanity. He believes he must bring happiness and progress to the peoples of the entire world. This is the “White Man’s Burden”as conceptualized by the British writer Rudyard Kipling. More recently, this white man has taken it into his head that he is also responsible for the misfortunes of his fellow men. His hubris pushes him to plead guilty to all the crimes of which he is accused and to pay off a pseudo “colonial debt”. This is how we must understand the astronomical and ever-increasing subsidies that the French state grants to the black continent. “Our goal: to do more for Africa”tweeted Emmanuel Macron, May 18, 2021. “We have a debt to Africa”he declared again, a few months later.
This idea of a sin that could be absolved by handing out hard cash is very naive. In reality, the more France takes out its checkbook, gets on its knees and covers its head with ashes, the less it is respected. Some peoples have nothing but contempt and hatred for those who spend their time apologizing. “On the subject of Algeria and African countries to which we give billions of euros each year, I challenge you to go and find me the counterpart that France gets from it. We don’t even get them to take back their illegal immigrants!”observes Sarah Knafo.
This is true, alas. Our generosity towards the South earns us nothing in return, not the slightest recognition. At a time when our country is sorely lacking in liquidity, it would be good to be aware of this.
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