Macron is to blame for France’s dismal economy

Standard & Poor’s downgrading of France’s credit rating on Friday is a hammer blow to President Macron’s reputation. The ratings agency has reduced France from AA to AA-, putting it on a par with the Czech Republic and Estonia and one notch below the UK. It is the first time S&P has downgraded France’s debt since 2013, although the firm Fitch did so in April 2023. This is comeuppance for years of ‘as much as it takes’ spending by a president haunted by the gilets jaunes movement.

The credit rating downgrade comes just a week before the European elections, where Macron’s Renaissance party is trailing the Rassemblement National (RN) by over 16 points. It is even more poignant given ex-banker Macron’s reputation as ‘the Mozart of finance’. In the notorious 2017 television debate for the second round of the presidential election, Macron’s humiliation of Marine Le Pen’s financial ignorance of the euro sealed her defeat.