Left-wing parties in France pledged on Friday to raise 30 billion euros a year from taxing businesses and the wealthy if they win a majority in early parliamentary elections, sparking anger from centrists and businessmen.
The pledges to fund new welfare grants come as the left tries to catch up to the far-right National Rally (RN) in the polls — both well ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s camp.
The Socialists, Greens, Communists and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) will “immediately restore a property tax with a climate component” to bring in “15 billion euros” ($16 billion) if they enter government, he said Socialist Senator Alexandre Ouizille to reporters in Paris.
A tax on business windfalls will bring in an extra €15 billion, the New People’s Front (NPF) alliance predicts.
They plan to spend the cash to reverse Macron’s hugely unpopular rise in the official retirement age, as well as increase payments for housing and unemployment benefits and public sector wages.
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Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s former chief economist, called the NPF plans “essentially confiscatory in nature,” in a message on Twitter.
“It’s hard to see how this won’t lead to businessmen moving their operations elsewhere en masse,” he added.
In a sign of faltering confidence, French debt yields have soared since the president called snap elections after European polls collapsed, as investors react to lavish spending plans from both the left and the RN.
France’s public finances are already under pressure, with an outstanding debt of around 110% of GDP — more than three trillion euros — and a persistent public deficit that on Wednesday led to a rebuke from the European Commission.
Bond markets show “the immediate consequences of the completely absurd and irresponsible economic and financial plans” from both the left and the far right, Macron’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday.
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He has vowed to bring France’s deficit back to the EU’s notional limit of 3% by 2027, from more than 5% this year.
The RN has for its part vowed to confront Brussels over the party’s plans to cut VAT on fuel — which is banned by EU rules aimed at curbing greenhouse emissions.
“Electoral anti-Semitism”
Ministers led by Prime Minister Gabriel Atal have hammered out their message that they are the only bulwark against two “extremes” left and right.
“Today there are three blocs, two of them extreme that feed off each other because they are fueled by divisions between French people, stigmatizing some French people,” Attal said in Marseille on Friday.
The RN’s core messaging revolves around opposition to Islam and immigration, with its manifesto pledging to “stop the immigration flood”.
But claims of anti-Semitism have reverberated louder this week, intensifying after the rape of a 12-year-old girl by two teenagers allegedly motivated by hatred of Jews.
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Some figures in the LFI, the largest party in the left-wing alliance, have been accused of anti-Semitism for their reactions to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war.
“There is no equivalence between the contextual, populist and electoral anti-Semitism used by some members of the LFI and the founding, historical and substantive anti-Semitism of the RN”, which was co-founded by a former member of the Waffen-SS, lawyer Arie Alimi and historian Vincent Lemire wrote in an article for the daily Le Monde.
While “it cannot be denied that there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism from the left”, they insisted that “the NPF is the only electorally credible alternative to prevent an openly xenophobic party from taking control of our institutions”.
The left’s election platform includes a condemnation of Hamas’s attack on Israel and a plan to deal with racism and anti-Semitism.
Rush for proxy votes
As voters rush to prepare for the June 30 and July 7 polls, more than a million have already registered to vote by proxy in the election that falls at the start of the summer holiday season.
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The number was more than 1,055,000 by June 20, the interior ministry said, already surpassing the number seen in parliamentary elections in June 2022, when people were more attentive and more likely to be at home.
Some eyes were also already on the Paris Olympics starting at the end of July, which Macron did not shy away from using to call on voters to choose stability.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday he would not continue in his post overseeing security at the Games if Macron’s camp loses the election, “even for a few extra weeks”.
However, “the Olympics have been well prepared, everyone knows and appreciates that,” he added.
Source: AFP