Macron's battle against the forces of French anarchy

This week France announced a €100 billion (£89 billion) stimulus package equivalent to 4 per cent of GDP over two years. It might seem churlish to ask why the French government has put so much money on the table. To save the French economy, of course. But there’s a graver concern in France that has lately come to the fore.

But first, some context to the ‘France Revival’ stimulus programme. It adds to the most generous furlough scheme of any developed economy, which in the spring was already calculated to push France’s debt to GDP ratio over 121 per cent, according to France’s budget statistics. The rationale is that France’s economy is predicted to take one of the biggest hits from the pandemic – after that of the UK – and consequently Macron should do ‘whatever it takes’.