OPEN LETTER – In this open letter addressed to Emmanuel Macron, the senator from Côte-d’Or Alain Houpert bluntly draws up a damning diagnosis of the French economic situation and urges the President of the Republic to adopt urgent measures in favor of SMEs, hard hit by the successive crises. Here is his letter.
Mister President,
I am writing you a letter which you may read if you have time. For several months now, the French men and women have been listening with astonishment to you talking about a country they do not recognize. This country is that of a powerful, strong France, always better than its European neighbours, always more resistant, always more innovative, always more protective, with fantastic growth, a flourishing economy, a world of company of which you express your pride.
But your pride doesn’t trickle down any more than our country’s wealth. Your pride is not enough to make us forget these long months during which you forced our businesses and our liberal professions not to work. You will reply to this that you have supported “whatever the cost”, supported businesses, supported employment, but at what cost?
Today, the addition is there but the account is not there…
To considerably aggravate our public deficits, you have bet on exceptional growth, a flourishing economy and a future that is not announced.
The war is there and with it its procession of upheavals: energy crisis, trade balance in agony, recession of the economy, explosion of inflation. In this context, the companies that you believe should have benefited from these exceptional results find themselves with their backs to the wall. The catch-up of the charges, the first repayments of the loans guaranteed by the State, the current charges puncture still more the treasuries, in particular of the liberal professions.
While these treasuries are tight, your Minister of the Economy returns “companies facing their responsibility” to raise wages. But with what? He invites them to invest, but with what? Even banks today are cautious of investors, uncertain of the trust they can place in government guarantees.
The international context in Ukraine, but also in Taiwan which announces another crisis to come endangers, in proportions never reached since the end of the Second World War, the whole of the French economy. In disbelief look at our British friends who watched their economy crumble in a matter of weeks. Let’s look at Germany’s public debt soaring in two years and the consequences of bad choices concerning nuclear power.
The Covid-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine have thrown the reality of our country in the face of the French: an industrial nation in agony, an agricultural country in decline, an overtaxed economic nation, incapable of producing most of its needs in products and services: the catastrophic results of the trade balance have shown this to us.
Mister President. For two years you have enjoyed talking about war, maintaining a permanent showdown with the French men and women, and with Parliament.
The twice triggering of 49.3 by the government demonstrates once again the primary inability of the executive to accept any compromise and to consider ideas outside your party.
For five years now, frenzy has guided your choices, despite warnings, despite opposition, despite the reality on the ground. At the end of these five years, agriculture, the public hospital, national education, the judicial police, justice, the economy, all these areas for which you have started media reforms are on the verge of explosion. .
Today, small and medium-sized businesses are the only bulwark against a decline which seems inevitable in the eyes of the French and which, even more serious than undermining their purchasing power, is undermining their confidence in our very idea of nation and in our role in Europe. Today, SMEs are at the forefront to maintain and defend the French economy, but for how long will they be able to?
French companies need a captain of industry and not a consultant who asks them, despite any consideration of their economic situation, to take their responsibilities by assuming the keeping afloat of the entire French economy. without any guarantee of state support or any vision of the economic consequences of the energy crisis.
The state must assume its responsibility. Freeze the charges relating to the various confinements during which SMEs were unable to work, postpone and extend the repayment periods for PGEs, spread out the charges due for the past two years to enable SMEs to cope with the explosion of costs energy and raw materials and to continue producing.
More than ever, it is crucial to anticipate and no longer react piecemeal.
The main thing today is to preserve the fabric of the French economy, to protect the cash flow of SMEs to support employment. When the time comes, it will be they, as after every crisis, that will ensure France’s recovery.