It could have been the climate transition or the fight against inequalities. But no. It is on the economy, and more specifically on budgetary issues, that the presidential majority and the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) have been clashing for several days, in an astonishing battle of figures which electrifies the end of the campaign. legislative.
« Ils [le gouvernement] have decided to withdraw 80 billion from the State budget, that is to say the budget of the entire Ministry of the Interior plus that of education, struck the leader of La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, at the microphone of BFM-TV, Monday, June 13. Let them tell us how they plan to do it! »
An allusion to what the Nupes considers to be the “Macron’s hidden project” : increase VAT to finance the 80 billion euro cut. “I answer in their place, explained Mr. Mélenchon again on Monday. (…) You won’t be able to take that amount off, so you’re going to have to increase revenue. So you will increase the VAT. »
“I want to deny with the greatest firmness (…) this delirium of our adversaries. We have no intention of increasing VAT rates”reacted the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, on Tuesday June 14 on BFM-TV, taxing the episode of “conspirator”.
“Austerity not assumed”
As often in politics, we make the numbers say what we want. Jean-Luc Mélenchon can rightly be offended that the amount advanced is called “fake news”. The 80 billion corresponds more or less to the sum necessary to reduce the public deficit (which reached 6.5% of GDP in 2021) to 3% by 2027. This is the objective brandished by Emmanuel Macron as the alpha and omega of the budgetary seriousness of its second five-year term. Without hardly any substantiated explanations, while growth is slowing down and the pension reform, the main source of savings envisaged by the government, is struggling to take shape.
But the continuation of Mr. Mélenchon’s reasoning is much more specious. There was never any question of a VAT increase. If not with a few “walking” deputies several years ago, and possibly in the drawers of Bercy, whose administrations are never stingy in terms of fiscal creativity. The government has always made raising taxes a red line. And the trauma of the “yellow vests”, a crisis triggered by the soaring carbon tax on fuels, hardly pleads in favor of a change of foot.
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