2024-09-10 04:15:00
A right all in Gaullian stiffness. What is the economic software of the person who has just put himself on the Prime Minister’s chair? We can limit ourselves to reading a few lines of Michel Barnier’s campaign program for the first LR with a view to the 2022 presidential election: delay of the retirement age to 65, no pensions below the minimum wage for full employment, increase in social contributions. for middle wages, a reduction in taxes for manufacturing companies in France, a carbon tax at the borders of Europe… A good right-wing agenda.
“Barnier is an ultraliberal, a defender of the ultraliberal European Union,” said the national secretary of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, a day after his arrival in Matignon. Mistake: The new President is what can be called “ordoliberal”, who affirms the values of competition and freedom of the company but believes that the market cannot correct itself. That we need laws, standards, a process, oversight, to avoid abuses and excesses.
To understand Barnier’s software, you have to go back more than ten years and go to Brussels. In February 2010, France was appointed European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services. At the beginning of this decade, the world was burning on a financial volcano. Starting in the United States, the massive subprime crisis – defaulted real estate loans – has disrupted the world. All major banks, especially European ones, have a role. Countries must restore them with billions of dollars or euros, avoiding new bank failures which could bring the global economy to the ground and remove the savings of millions of savers. It is not possible, however, to save the banks without compensation. Across the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, the era was one of banking and financial regulation. In Brussels, Michel Barnier is in charge: during five years in the Council, he will be at the origin of almost 40 European regulations governing the work of banks.
In the bed of NGO Finance Watch
But the article is dry, complex and important international banks are working in Brussels to open this new process. Around twenty European MEPs from all parties, including Green MEP Pascal Canfin then asked for the creation of a counter lobby to help understand current issues. Barnier was convinced and, in early 2011, gave an annual grant of 1 million euros to the fledgling NGO, Business Finance. A Greenpeace type of banking. “This grant, which represents almost half of our budget, allows us to develop,” says Thierry Philipponnat, founder and economist today of the NGO. In the process, Barnier asked a group of experts led by the former President of the Central Bank of Finland, Erkki Liikanen, to plan a major banking reform.
Their report sent in early 2012, which defended the isolation of retail banking services from more risks, angered the financial lobby. The proposals are contained in many of a major proposal on the reform of the European banking system presented by the commissioner in early 2014. In France, these extraordinary measures caused an uproar within the Hollande government itself. It must be said that the socialist president passed his own law, a pale copy of the Barnier process and which will quickly be void of its articles. Christophe Nijdam, former head of Finance Watch and author of Latvia said that “the Barnier reform will be definitely buried by Latvian Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis in 2016. Money for dummies. Dombrovskis, very close today to Ursula von der Leyen…
The lesson of history? In his uniform as Prime Minister, Barnier will seek to respect the European rules that he voted for, and especially the budget rules. From his first public intervention, the tenant of Matignon spoke about “tax justice”. Between the lines, we should understand increased taxes, especially on high incomes and – or – large businesses. Against the Macron doctrine.
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