The new tenant of Matignon has been highlighting the problem of resolving the French debt and deficit for several years.
“No one knows the difficulty of the political and budgetary situation more than me,” said new Prime Minister François Bayrou on Friday during the handover of power with his predecessor Michel Barnier in Matignon. “I know nothing about the Himalayas that lie before us, the difficulties of all kinds,” said the new tenant of Matignon.
“It is a question which poses a moral problem, not just a financial problem”, he added on the subject of the deficit and the debt, he who will have to provide France with a budget next year, in a National Assembly without a majority.
During the 2007 presidential election, which saw him exceed 18% in the first round, the MoDem candidate focused his campaign on reducing the debt and deficit, a particularly unpopular subject. Ten years later, he believed that “the future of our country is compromised if we continue to live on credit.” We cannot continue to pretend, to make people believe that the debt is not a problem,” he added.
As part of his last functions, as High Commissioner for Planning, François Bayrou also dealt with this theme, in particular through a note entitled “Facing the Covid debt, a strategy for recovery”.
A pro-SME Prime Minister
Supporting Emmanuel Macron since 2017, the president of MoDem supported the Labor law and the reform of professional training while advocating for the protection of the most vulnerable workers. He also wants to establish an economic environment favorable to small and medium-sized businesses. As such, the CPME underlined on Friday that small and medium-sized businesses expected François Bayrou “to create the conditions to regain visibility, readability and stability”, the mantra of the Confederation for months .
“The current economic slowdown risks transforming into a real economic crisis whose beginnings are being felt,” warns the CPME.
The Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises also calls for “the rapid adoption of a budget”, and to “finally translate into action the long-awaited simplification measures”. A law containing numerous simplification measures for businesses, launched at the start of the year by the former boss of Bercy Bruno Le Maire, saw its discussion in Parliament stopped by the dissolution. Finally adopted by the Senate in October, it is expected to arrive in the National Assembly in early 2025.
Reservations on pension reform
The intense social episode around pension reform was the most significant illustration of the distances that François Bayrou can take from the President of the Republic. Although he supported the project in order to make the pension system more sustainable, he described the reform as “poorly prepared, poorly explained” and deplored “the forceful passage” that constituted the shift in the legal retirement age. from 62 to 64 years old. Likewise, he recommends involving businesses via a “very slight increase in employer contributions” in order to finance the reform.
The new Prime Minister is also a defender of ecology which he sees as “a lever for innovation and job creation”. Friday afternoon, the resigning Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy Agnès Pannier-Runacher also welcomed her appointment to Matignon. As former Minister of National Education, François Bayrou also advocates measures that promote innovation and in line with the world of work within the school area.
A solution to agricultural anger?
Finally, the appointment of François Bayrou also comes in a new period of agricultural anger, he who often highlights his peasant origins. During a visit to the agricultural show in 2018, the president of MoDem defined himself as “very close, very intimate” to farmers. He then shared at least in part their fears of a possible EU-Mercosur free trade agreement – a subject six years later once again at the heart of their mobilization.
“I think they are right on one point: we cannot set rules for European farmers that are not respected by others,” he said, referring in particular to the use of certain pesticides in South America.
As of Friday, the FNSEA requested “an emergency meeting” with the new head of government, from whom the first agricultural union demands “a strong commitment” to agriculture “from the very first moment of taking office” . “He knows all the solutions that are on the table. I sent him a letter to remind him of them. Income, means of production, simplification… We urgently need concrete results, visibility and commitment on these measures, ” listed the president of the FNSEA Arnaud Rousseau.
