Public spending: Larcher castigates French management and fears “a situation like Greece”

2023-05-18 16:51:42

Could France experience the same economic crisis as Greece in 2010? This is what Gérard Larcher, President LR of the Senate, fears, if public spending is not controlled. In an interview at the Tribune published this Thursday, he does not mince his words as to the management of public finances by the government: “Not a day or almost goes by without the President of the Republic announcing new expenditure. Savings are unfortunately more rare. “In particular on the 2 billion euros in tax cuts by 2027 promised on Monday, “I wonder about the financing of such a measure”, he added.

The President of the Senate believes that Emmanuel Macron is the biggest spender of the Fifth Republic, regretting an increase in public spending of 240 billion during the first five-year term, and 220 billion planned for the next five years. “The trend is twice as fast as under François Hollande. We have to come to our senses,” he said. On this subject “the request of the Senate is clear: we must control public spending, otherwise we risk experiencing a situation like Greece”, which had experienced a serious crisis at the turn of the 2010s and which rocked Europe , he assured.

Macron must “change the way he governs”

Gérard Larcher affirmed that “in the current state, we will not vote for the public finance programming bill” and called for “a clear, ambitious and credible trajectory for reducing the public deficit”. This is not the only thing he blames Emmanuel Macron for. According to him, “the first reform” that the president must accomplish, “is to change his way of governing”. “We are not experiencing an institutional crisis but a political crisis” linked “of course to the absence of a majority in the National Assembly” but also “to the mode of governance of the Head of State and his verticality”, a- he estimated.

While the elected LRs are preparing to table two immigration bills next week, the President of the Senate considers that, on this subject, “all the signals are red. We can’t wait any longer, our reception capacities are saturated”. And to add: “The President of the Republic knows it. The ball is in his court “. He assures that “there is no question for Les Républicains to regularize in the name of the employment of immigrants who entered irregularly”.