If the diplomatic performance in the war in Ukraine has so far yielded results to Emmanuel Macron, candidate for re-election in France, the presidential campaign was officially launched last Monday (28) with the same Macron trying to impose the issue of the economy on the political agenda of the parents.
The first round is scheduled for the 10th of April, and the current president leads the most recent polls of the Ifop institute, with 29% of the voting intentions – followed by Marine Le Pen (21%), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (15 %), Eric Zemmour and Valérie Pécresse (tied at 10%).
The main competitors are also interested in bringing the economy up for debate, since, according to analysts, the subject is both an asset and a challenge for Macron.
“A good economic balance is far from defining an election. It’s not a thriving economy and a high GDP that lead to reelection,” says Daniel Boy, director emeritus of research at Sciences Po in Paris.
Many numbers, in any case, are favorable to the president, especially in the post-pandemic scenario. The job market, for example, recovered its losses and went further; the unemployment rate is at 7.4%, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. Upon being elected in 2017, Macron, who was François Hollande’s economy minister for two years, promised to lower the rate to 7%.
“Economic activity in France today is higher than we had before the health crisis, which is rare in Western Europe. And job creation is the highest in decades, there are more people working now than at the end of 2019”, says Nicolas Bouzou, director of the consultancy Asterès, who also highlights the improvement in the business environment and the attraction of local and foreign investments.
With regard to microeconomics, however, the loss of the population’s purchasing power can disturb the discourse of bonanza. The matter is especially delicate for a country that, between 2018 and 2019, saw large demonstrations led by the so-called yellow vests also mobilized around this.
After the restrictions of the pandemic and the increase in the prices of raw materials, the resumption brought with it an increase in inflation – which today is around 3% in France and 5% in Europe, according to Eurostat, the statistics office. of the European Central Bank.
“If we have inflation, it is precisely because we have resumed strong economic activity. And some production sectors are still not well organized in the post-crisis period, there is a lack of products, semiconductors and other electronic components. This lack increases prices”, says Bouzou. .
The war in Ukraine also helped to exacerbate the energy issue facing the continent, compared by some experts to the 1973 oil crisis. Although France is not one of the countries most dependent on Russian gas (about 20% of the product consumed in the country comes from Moscow), the price of electricity has risen by around 4% — which weighs more heavily in the past winter months, when people already pay more for home heating.
Analysts therefore ponder that, as much as the economy in general is doing well, the general expense of French homes is higher and that should be placed on the current president’s account. Daniel Boy claims that the The most important thing in the country’s daily life today is not public security, immigration (right and far-right themes) or macroeconomics (Macron’s theme), but purchasing power.
Under Macron’s leadership, the government distributed vouchers worth 100 euros (R$ 581) for energy payments and another 100 euros in “inflation checks” to the poorest families, as a way of trying to mitigate the effects of the loss of power of purchase. However, according to experts, there is no medium and long-term answer to help the French deal with the rise in prices.
To circumvent the energy crisis, the president announced — still on February 10, therefore before the war promoted by Russia in Ukraine — a bet on nuclear energy.
Bet that is also a change of position, since at the beginning of his term, in 2017, the plan was to abandon this form of energy generation, of which the country is the second largest generator in the world, behind only the United States. Now, at the end of the five-year period, Macron has announced the order of six new generation reactors by 2050 and the possibility of starting the construction of another eight. “France is choosing its independence and freedom,” he said at the time.
Behind the initiative, according to Boy, are two simple concepts: sovereignty (a topic that gained importance with the sanctions applied to Russia) and continuity in energy generation. Although the Frenchman has announced that he will also invest in renewable sources, the analyzes focused on the nuclear aspect, debated across the continent – Germany, for example, has a program to phase out this matrix.
Emissions from nuclear energy are significantly lower than those from coal, oil and natural gas. Still, compared to wind and solar energy, the technology costs are much higher and the construction of nuclear power plants takes much longer. Among the presidential candidates, practically only Mélenchon and Yannick Jadot (Greens), both more to the left, indicated restrictions on this type of energy.
According to Bouzou, if Macron manages to impose the economic issue, in the first and likely second round, from the point of view of job creation (“more concrete”) instead of talking about GDP growth (“more abstract”), it has the possibility of convincing part of the population and taking the focus off the themes that the names on the right —Le Pen, Zemmour and Pécresse— seek to highlight.
“It’s no use convincing the French at the bottom of the pyramid that the macroeconomy is doing well. They need solutions: lower energy prices, better-paying jobs, cheaper houses, getting to the end of the month without a pinch.”
