If you wanted to create a classic recipe for political crisis, you could well choose a mixture of a stagnant economy, a huge and growing public debt, a perceived need radically to increase military spending, an immigration crisis, a deeply unpopular president, a government without a majority in parliament, and growing radical parties on the right and left.
In other words, France today. And France’s crisis is only one part of the growing crisis of Western Europe as a whole, with serious implications for the future of transatlantic relations.
The latest shock in France has come with the announcement by Prime Minister Francois Bayrou that he will call a parliamentary vote of confidence on September 8 over his plan for €43.8 billion ($51.1 billion) in budget cuts to address France’s budget deficit 5.8 percent of GDP — almost double the three percent that is supposed to be the limit for members of the Eurozone, and the highest in Europe after Greece and Italy, leading to a debt to GDP ratio of 113 percent. French GDP growth last year was only 1.2 percent and the economy is projected to grow by a mere 0.6 percent this year.
Bayrou’s plan includes the freezing of welfare payments, reductions in pensioners’ benefits, the abolition of two national holidays, deep cuts to state jobs, and unspecified tax increases for the wealthy. The only area of state spending that will increase is the military — and it is President Macron’s pledge (in line with the promise of Europe’s NATO members to President Trump) radically to increase military spending that has brought France’s fiscal crisis to a head.
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