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AB 2000 studies

Alain Boublil Blog

 

The extremist political parties and the economy

The French voters, when they went to vote, have given their votes with never before observed proportions to extremist political groups. During the presidential election, the candidate of the Rassemblement National, the new name of the former Front National, was qualified for the second round in reaching the second place, just above the far-left candidate. She then got more than 40% of the votes. During the election for the National Assembly, with a very high level of abstentions, the two extremist formations, the France Unbowed with 79 elected and the Rassemblement National with 89 elected, have got a never observed in the past number of seats;

These shares of the votes would be the consequence of the deep miscontent of larges shares of the population confronted with the diminution of their purchasing power due to inflation, with the degradation of the public services and more generally with a sentiment of abandon. They felt they were the victims of the previous governments. So the electors have given their votes to the extremists parties from the right and from the left, without taking into consideration the economic content of the programs of these political groups and its ability to bring an answer to the expectations of their new electors.

For these groups, the source of the economic difficulties which had motivated these millions of votes, was laying in the combination of three harms, the globalization, Europe and the euro. But the indisputable difficulties the French economy is enduring and many French people are victims have external origins. The sanitary crisis has constituted an unprecedent shock. Would have it been overpassed without the vaccines and the obligation to have masks, measures criticized by the political leaders who have, despite that, got hundreds of thousands of votes? The commodities prices increase has been the consequence of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The same political leaders had, in the past, put forward their proximity with the Kremlin. The perturbation of the supply chains, after the rebound of the pandemic in China has contributed to inflation and has weighted on employment when it has been necessary to close plants. So it is the proof that we cannot, from one day to another, get rid of the globalization without generating heavy economic damages whose the first victims will be these who vote in favor of these who ask for it.

Globalization is an irreversible phenomenon. A country can try to exit from it through the denunciation of international trade agreements and the instauration of customs and regulatory barriers at its borders. But the price to be paid will be heavy. It will first be affected by retorsion measures. Its products will not be accepted outside and hundreds of thousand jobs will be threatened. The country will lose the two major benefits consumers were taking profit from it, a large diversity of the offered products and services and especially a level of prices which was making these products accessible to everyone. The perturbation of the global supply chains has generated an inflation rebound without precedent for forty years. So it is the proof, if it was needed, of the benefits a State and its population can take from globalization.

The second trial brought by the extremist parties and included in their programs is about Europe. Of course, none of them clearly put forward a choice in favor of a “Frexit” to copy the word used in the United Kingdom to described the exit from the Union. But when you put forward the priority given to a coming back of the sovereignty, when you promise to disobey to the current Treaties, when you proclaim that we will not respect the decisions of the European institutions and courts, as the France Unbowed and the Rassemblement National leaders are saying, we must call a cat a cat and admit that it is the belonging to the Union which is in question.

The economic consequences would be catastrophic. Are these political groups ready to explain to the rural population that they would have to get rid of the benefits offered by the common agricultural policy? Will they convince the trade unions that the foreign companies located in France will not close their plants because it will be impossible, without heavy customs duties, to export toward the other members of the European Union? Are they going to be able to convince French people that the restoration of controls at the borders, especially for the cross-border workers, that it is a good thing and that it will not affect tourism? This choice, in the name of a recovered sovereignty, would have repercussions on jobs and on the French people daily life unacceptable for them and it is the reason why the whole clarity on these programs must be done.

The last point is about the euro. Of course, after having understood that after the 2017 debate to which point that was worrying electors, that proposal isn’t any more explicitly included in the Rassemblement National program. But it is still there implicitly because you cannot promise to recover your sovereignty and to get rid of the Union rules and to pretend to keep the euro. It is the same with France Unbowed which clearly claims its right to get rid of all the rules regarding the unique currency when in the same time you make promises of massive public expenditures. When you see the French indebtedness level and the determining role of the European Central Bank in the country ability to finance its deficits every year, to abandon the euro would lead to a tough rebound of interest rates, a sharp fall of the new national currency and a scenario near these countries like Argentina and Venezuela have been submitted, countries whose the France Unbowed leader has always said he was close to their presidents.

The paradox, it is that the first victims of such proposals will be these who are today the poorest or these who think, rightly or wrongly, that they are abandoned by the political power. But they have not understood they are the main benefactors, even if it could be even more important, of the system that these, for whom they have voted, are proposing to abandon. Without the euro, never the measures which have been adopted to overpass the sanitary crisis, would have been financed. Without the European Union, never the hundreds of thousand jobs created by foreign companies to locate themselves in the unique market would have existed. At last, without globalization, consumers, and especially these who have a life level inferior to the average, would not have had access to such a large and diversified goods offer.

The European Union as the creation of the euro have profited to everyone and in particular to these who have voted for the political formations which were criticizing that historical evolution. The responsibility of that vote comes to these who have not been able to explain to the electors that behind these ambiguous and frequently demagogic proposals, there were heavy threats. To the contrary, globalization which, whatever was its nature, is an irreversible phenomenon, has not been rightly managed, especially by the big companies. So the solution is not to go out from globalization, to suppose it is possible, but to adapt our rules and our behaviors to this new world which is not going to disappear.

The 2022 presidential and National Assembly elections have shown, with the high abstention level and the shares of votes reached by the extremist parties which have known how to persuade millions of electors to vote in favor of policies they would be the first victims, a certain inability to explain the today world stakes. The main challenge in the years to come will be to remedy to this weakness which leads to a political situation which harms France image in the world.  

                 

        

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