It was supposed to be a galactic variant of Gerhard Schröder’s Hartz IV agenda in the early 2000s, the reforms that led Germany from a sick man in Europe to a weak competitor, with the help of an undervalued synthetic D mark in the euro’s internal structure.
Professor Granville said the bet failed. Mr Macron facilitated recruitment and dismissal, although his Scandinavian “flexi security” model would not seem flexible to Danes. It has decentralized wage bargaining: companies are no longer as affiliated with unions, which make up less than 8% of the workforce.
He has abolished the property tax, thanking the financial elites who put him in power. “But it did not reduce taxes on production, which is why (structural) unemployment is so high in France,” he said.
The suffocating bureaucracy and confusing bond of overlapping bodies is for the most part untouched. The plan to reduce the public payroll by 100,000 has been shelved.
Mr Macron ‘s big deal involved reciprocal inherited debts in the EU and therefore the transfer of French liabilities to Germany’ s credit card, and that ‘s where the rubbish lies. He secured Berlin’s consent for a joint debt of 800 billion euros for the Pandemic Recovery Fund, but legally this was a one-off initiative.
The French calculation was that this fund would evolve into a Hamilton tax “entity” over time, using the EU’s Monnet method of creeping in. France for the next five years significantly increase the chances. “The German Orthodox (hardliners) are back,” said Professor Granville.
Mr Macron prefers to ignore the message of the election. In a gruesome speech he rebuked the voters for inconsistency, seemed to accuse them of giving him a presidential mandate in what he called a clear political manifesto and then did not ratify it by a parliamentary majority. But the French people did not choose him for their program. They voted to stop Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National from taking power.
