After the second round of voting in the French parliamentary elections of 2017, President Emmanuel Macron’s party, La République en Marche! (The Republic on the Move!), won a plurality of the first round’s votes at 32%, and is set for victory in the run-off election on June 18th.
Estimates predict that his party will win between 400 to 440 of the 577 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower and primary house of the national parliament. With the party set to win a vast majority in the legislature, Macron will soon have the power to implement his agenda, and for those wanting to see a government rollback in France, there are a few rays of hope shining on the over-regulated republic, with an emphasis on ‘few.’
The Good
Taxes: President Macron has been open to the possibility of decreasing taxes on corporate earnings and decreasing payroll taxes for low-income workers.
Finances: During the campaign Macron advocated for shrinking public spending by 5% from 57% to 52% of the GDP. He also called for the reduction of France’s budget deficit to sub-3% to comply with European Union standards set forth in the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact.
Labor policy: Macron hopes to make structural changes to the French labor market that has long been lacking productivity and is inflexible due to extremely strong public and private sector unions, and a labor code with such a vast quantity of regulations that it is longer than the Bible. His plans to achieve liberalization of the labor market include changing the law to allow companies to negotiate with local union officials over salaries, hours, and benefits. As of now they may only negotiate with national labor bosses who are often less compromising and less knowledgeable about specifics pertaining to any given company-labor relationship.
He would also like to minimize the costs a company must incur in order to lay off workers. France has such heavy regulation in regards to the dismissal of a worker that many companies fear to expand, knowing that if a new employee doesn’t work out they may not practically be able to let them go. Fear of expansion is the last thing the French economy, with an unemployment rate that continues to sit north of 10%, needs.
The Bad
Retirement: During the campaign Macron ruled out raising the minimum retirement from 62, which is younger than the average rate in neighboring Germany (65) and the United Kingdom (66), both of which have much more efficient, competitive labor markets and economies.
Work week: France’s work week sits at a meager 35 hours per week to be considered full time. Macron has already ruled out the possibility of increasing the limit, instead vowing to work within the existing established system.
European Union: The new president is a devout Europhile, and believes that the best way forward for Europe is further integration at the European Union-level in Brussels, which will ultimately lead to the further centralization of power on the continent and further bureaucratic bloat
So, overall, for every commendable flank of Macron’s platform, there is another to criticize, and the parts that are commendable are by no means remarkable in scale.
He is cut from the same cloth as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and wishes to bring their “third way” style of center-left politics to France. (The nation missed the third way train back in the 1990s because they were too busy flirting with communism.) This is a political philosophy that advocacy for would not be defendable from a limited government standpoint in most cases, but in the case of France — a nation so heavily mired by an all-encompassing and domineering state — it may be the best the reeling republic can hope for.
Macron’s minor reforms, if implemented, may buy the French state some time to wait for a real revolutionary to transform France, because this puffed up plutocrat is far from an ideal savior
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