President François Hollande was slightly more specific about his economic plans than about his private life at his press conference yesterday.
Details of a proposed “pact of responsibility” with business management, whereby social charges paid by companies will be lowered if businesses recruit more employees, were the main theme. Mr Hollande promised to cut up to €35 billion from charges paid by companies between now and 2017. And he promised to cut €50 billion from government spending to pay for it.
There was no clear indication where the €50 billion would come from. The president promised to attack those old chestnuts, waste and fraud. French doctors make too many medical prescriptions, and don’t use enough generic medicine, he said. But it didn’t add up to €50 billion.
The president’s remarks were truffled with councils, committees, commissions, reports, conferences . . . Eighteen months after he came to power, he’s setting up a new “strategic council on spending”. It will meet monthly to figure out how to cut the €50 billion.
'Maintain her influence'
His goal, Mr Hollande said, "is to get French society moving . . . If France wants to maintain her influence in the world, if France intends to count in Europe . . . she absolutely must regain economic strength."
Since the announcement of the “responsibility pact”, there has been much talk of a “turning point” in Mr Hollande’s presidency. “We’re not changing paths, just going faster, further, accelerating,” he said.
The business management group Medef has demanded a reduction in social charges for years, and Mr Hollande is suddenly portrayed as business-friendly “social liberal”. Over the long term, only business can create enough jobs to reverse unemployment, he said repeatedly.
Mr Hollande defined four components to his pact: reducing the cost of labour; giving companies long-term visibility by providing them with a “trajectory of taxes” through 2017; simplification of bureaucratic procedures – a promise he made last March, with few palpable results; and compensation expected from companies for all of the above.
Judging from the president’s remarks, the change in business conditions will generate a whole new wave of bureaucracy. A “council of simplification” will review the administrative hassles to which companies are subjected.
An “observatory of compensation” will determine how many jobs companies must create, including for youths and seniors, and how to deal with training and salary negotiations.
The prime minister will convene the "assises of business taxation" this month. A "high council for social protection" will deliver a report at the end of February. All this will lead to a "Grande Conférence Sociale" in the spring, followed by a vote in the National Assembly.
Legalise euthanasia
Mr Hollande also wants to legalise euthanasia. He has asked the minister of health to draw up a text that would enable "any conscious, adult person who suffers from an incurable disease provoking unbearable psychological, physical suffering . . . to request, in strict conditions, medical assistance to end their life in dignity."
Though the first 18 months of Mr Hollande's presidency have been troubled, he spoke repeatedly of "victory" – in Mali; over the controversial entertainer Dieudonné, whose show was just banned on the grounds of anti-semitism.
"Since we're at the end of this press conference, I'll reveal a sort of secret," the president said, delivering his own, macho take on the aborted French and American bombing of Syria last September, and the subsequent dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons.
"It would have been possible [for France to bomb], because the United Nations had decided," he said. "We were capable of doing it. Few countries would be capable. Because of this threat and this credibility, we obtained that the arms be destroyed."
