The inevitable is at last beginning to dawn on Emmanuel Macron. The extravagant spending spree initiated after the violent and year-long 2018 ‘gilets jaunes’ protests will have to be reversed.
With the coffers empty, France is not only at the mercy of international finance, she is now highly vulnerable to the next social or political crisis
Overgenerous Covid and energy subsidies are expected to push the budget deficit to 4.9 per cent of GDP with the French debt to GDP ratio at 114 per cent, the largest absolute debt pile in the EU and one of the largest in the world. Unlike Italy’s debt, most of France’s is foreign-owned, so that she is far more vulnerable to the ‘kindness of strangers’. France already has some of the highest taxation rates in the OECD. We now learn that Macron’s hugely unpopular legislation extending the pension age to 64 will still leave an annual €6 billion pensions’ deficit by 2030.
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