Yellow Vest Got His Hand Blown Off (Again)
French President Emmanuel Macron hit the entrada trail in March, vying for re-election on a record that was somewhat stonewalled past five years of crisis. FRANCE 24 takes a look at how Macron has performed on social welfare issues – after the spending cuts he in one case pledged were thwarted past Yellowish Vest protests and the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is the third installment of FRANCE 24's four-role series on Emmanuel Macron'due south record as French president on foreign policy, economics, social spending and keeping his campaign promises.
Subsequently winning office in May of 2017, Macron quickly set out to trim French republic's social welfare spending. That summer, the freshly elected centrist chose cuts that targeted low-income earners – a €v a month cutting to personalised housing assistance and a massive reduction of subsidised employment contracts.
Those measures were unpopular – but in line with the logic that a new French leader get the unpopular stuff out of the way early on. They also fit with Macron'southward budget-minded ethic at the beginning of his v-yr term. Macron, who had served every bit economic system minister under onetime Socialist president François Hollande, reasoned that if he was to heave purchasing power and stimulate business organisation – while respecting the European union's golden rule and bringing the deficit under iii per centum of Gross domestic product – there was no style around slashing social welfare spending.
Those early decisions had staunch advocates in Macron'southward government – the financial discipline proponents the centrist president had poached from the right. Édouard Philippe, Macron's first prime minister, Economic system Minister Bruno Le Maire and Interior Government minister Gérard Darmanin, who initially served under Macron as budget minister, were all transplants from the conservative Les Républicains party.
Macron'south first economic measures – catastrophe the wealth tax, imposing a 30 percent "flat revenue enhancement" on capital gains – went further in earning the new French leader a moniker he has yet to shake: "le président des riches" (the president of the wealthy).
The nickname stuck every bit Macron persisted in seeking a deep revamp of the French social model, which is either beloved or scorned depending on 1's perspective. "We drop insane cash on social allowances and people are withal poor. Nosotros don't see the terminate of it. The people who are born poor stay poor. The people who get poor stay poor ... People have to be made accountable," Macron was seen telling advisers in a June 2022 video.
Three months afterward, the regime rolled out a four-year, €eight.5 billion "poverty plan". The project sought to rethink the French help system from tiptop to lesser in the name of "eradicating extreme poverty" within a generation. It sought to provide free breakfasts in some schools, €one school lunches in some municipalities, daycare spots for children from underprivileged families and a new universal benefit meant to consolidate a number of existing social allowances. The plan's objectives were ambitious, but they gradually barbarous by the wayside. And yet spending cuts in other sectors remained a priority.
'There is no magic money'
Indeed, Macron's 2022 entrada platform had planned for some €25 billion in savings, including €15 billion in the healthcare sector. But as a result, the public health budget wasn't meeting the sector'due south needs, with personnel increasingly stretched to the breaking point. When a healthcare worker appealed to Macron for more resources back in Apr 2018, the president replied, "There is no magic money." The president's top priority was respecting France'due south upkeep commitments to Brussels. And on that score, the results were clear for all to see: France's upkeep deficit dropped from iii.4 per centum of Gross domestic product in 2016, before Macron's ballot, to 2.8 percent in 2022 and 2.3 percent in 2018.
But raising the carbon taxation on fuel a few months later was the final straw for some in France and the upshot would come to disrupt Macron'due south plans. The Yellowish Belong protest movement began in Nov 2022 as a motorists' defection against rising fuel prices (French drivers are required to keep the high-visibility vests inside their vehicles every bit a safety measure) earlier escalating into a wider rebellion over the rising cost of living and against the regime. At first, France's leadership downplayed the movement. Just within weeks, it could no longer be ignored. As the peppery protests took concord on roundabouts nationwide, Macron was obliged to change course.
To quell tensions in early 2019, Macron launched the Great Debate, a months-long pursuit of dialogue meant to annals public complaints across the land. He also took activity to boost purchasing power, including a €5 billion income taxation cut, a €100 bonus for low-income workers and an increase in minimum pension benefits. The controversial carbon-revenue enhancement hike, meanwhile, was simply cancelled. Altogether, the bottom line was €17 billion in fresh public spending.
With the Xanthous Belong crisis behind information technology, the regime renewed its penny-pinching reform efforts, fifty-fifty at the risk of antagonising the country's labour unions. But worsening conditions in hospitals raised tensions with healthcare personnel throughout 2019. Finally, in November of that yr, the government pledged €ane.v billion for the sector over iii years, promised bonuses for nurses and nurses' aides, and assumed a 3rd of the debts hospitals had incurred. Simply healthcare workers were unimpressed with the authorities's emergency plan. More than than ane,000 hospital doctors, including 600 department heads, resigned in protest from the authoritative functions of their jobs in January 2020. And the worst was yet to come for France's hospitals.
Meanwhile, Macron's promised unemployment insurance reform, adopted in 2019, raised the bar to qualify for benefits while trimming the amounts allocated to individual jobseekers. Those alternate between brusk contracts and periods of joblessness were penalised. And while Macron had promised over the course of his 2022 presidential campaign that independent workers and employees who chose to exit their jobs would proceeds access to jobseeker benefits, the conditions required to authorize were particularly restrictive in practice. The regime explained that opening the system to too many people would have spurred unacceptably high spending. Indeed, cut costs there had been a Macron campaign pledge, too; he had promised €10 billion in unemployment-insurance savings.
Finally, at the tail end of 2019, the government fix out to push through pension reform that was also meant to bring in savings. The revamp sought to introduce a new universal points organization indexed to aggrandizement and a so-called pivot age. That latter controversially sought to enhance the age at which French retirees could collect a total pension by two years, to 64, while maintaining a legal retirement age of 62. The measure was not well received. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in protestation for weeks on end in late 2022 and early 2020. No pocket-size feat, the strike action became the longest ever in the history of the SNCF national public railway company and Paris public transit (RATP) equally transportation workers sought to save their coveted special pension regimes. The authorities would finally take the controversial step of forcing the reform through parliament without a vote on February 29, 2020.
'No matter the toll'
All of this was the prelude to a mammoth new crunch, the Covid-19 pandemic, which would yet over again flummox Macron'due south budget-cutting dreams and inflict overlapping wellness and economic crises on much of the residual of his term. In March 2020, Macron suspended his pension reform and delayed the full deployment of his unemployment insurance revamp. Near chiefly, Macron made a bold pledge that came to be known equally his "no matter the cost" pandemic policy: He promised, whatever the price tag, to support public hospitals, save businesses and jobs, and stimulate an economy that would ultimately shrink past eight per centum, a recession deeper than whatever France had known since Globe War 2.
The "magic money" Macron couldn't produce for healthcare personnel earlier in his term suddenly flowed freely and widely. French republic'due south healthcare budget grew by 9.4 percentage in 2022 and seven.4 percent in 2021, with healthcare workers winning €9 billion in salary increases in the summer of 2020. Overall, the emergency measures France adopted in 2022 and 2022 cost €133.5 billion, according to the country's Treasury. French republic'due south budget deficit, meanwhile, rose to 9.2 percent of GDP and public debt soared to more than 155 per centum in 2020. A far weep from the budgetary sobriety Macron had made the hallmark of his early years in office.
>> Macron unveils re-election manifesto, vows stronger France in time of crisis
But equally 2022 approached, with Macron eyeing re-election, the centrist incumbent was obliged to reassure the conservative segment of his base. His unemployment insurance reform finally came into effect in its entirety in the fall of 2021. And the watchword became responsibility. "Nosotros want to pursue the redefinition of our social contract, putting duties earlier rights, from respecting authorisation to receiving social benefits," regime spokesman Gabriel Attal told the daily "Le Parisien" in January.
Hitting the campaign trail in March, Macron has carried through on that vision. He pledged last week that, if he is re-elected in April, he will condition welfare benefits on recipients dedicating fifteen to xx hours a week to rejoining the workforce, either through task training or fractional employment. Every bit for Macron'south postponed pension reform, the president dropped the complex rejig once planned in favour of another that is hardly less controversial: he promised to raised France'south legal retirement historic period by iii years, to 65, if voters hand him a second term.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
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Source: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220323-yellow-vest-protests-covid-19-stymied-macron-s-plans-for-social-welfare-cuts
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