Let’s explore Le Pen’s magic budget proposal in detail.
Let Me Have the Cake
Eurointelligence analyzes Le Pen’s plan in its report Let Me Have the Cake.
Marine Le Pen presented her counter budget with the air of someone who thinks she can reassure the markets with just some random headline figures while keeping her radical promises in place. On paper the Rassemblement National promises to reduce the public deficit from 5.4% of GDP this year to 3.7% next and 2.8% in 2028. Instead of austerity she talks about a recovery cure. And the ones to pay for the €136bn in savings necessary to get to those deficit figures are the bad people: tax evaders, migrants and the EU. One may wonder: why has no one thought about this before?
RN’s Macroeconomic Assumptions
- This recovery cure relies on a crucial assumption, that somehow it is possible to squeeze €100bn in structural adjustments in 2027 and 2028 and still double the economic growth rate from 0.9% next year to between 1.7 and 1.8% in the years 2028 up to 2030. She seems not to have imputed any negative growth effects resulting from a fiscal consolidation of that magnitude. As if money in the pockets of migrants or tax evaders is not spent in the French economy.
- The plan promises a primary surplus in early 2028, which would then be used to reduce public debt. Separately, she is proposing a referendum for a golden rule as an insurance for the markets. There are lots of unknowns on this path.
Exaggerated Claims
- The RN expects €37bn in savings from Social Security. The measures in question sound vague: reducing hospital costs and streamlining patient pathways is to save €8bn, combatting undue spending another €10bn, and fixing the current pension system another €15bn. One concrete measure, according to Les Echos is for the pension to increase the contribution period required to validate a quarter of a pension, from four weeks currently to twelve. The party estimates that this would compensate for Le Pen’s retirement age at 62 proposal with an estimates cost of €10bn. This figure has been challenged by other economists who see these more in the league of tens of billions.
- The second pillar for savings come from fighting tax fraud. This fiscal gimmick has a long tradition in Europe. Italian political parties have always relied on proceeds from the the fight against tax evasion to plug holes in their fiscal promises, but not quite on the scale of what Le Pen is suggesting. She expects to raise a stunning €33bn. Over previous budget years the government never successfully claimed back more than €15bn, even if AI and data mining help identify tax evasion through business audits and individual checks. One of the main measures the RN counts on is a withholding tax system for VAT, which is expected to boost revenue by €18bn. But estimates for VAT fraud vary between the government’s €6bn and INSEE’s €26bn. It looks as if the RN just chose a number that fit into their narrative.
- Additional revenues are to come from a fight against breaches of competition laws, in particular in public procurement. The imputed revenues are €13bn.
- The third pillar is migration. The RN is attempting to recoup €29bn from immigrants by 2031. Foreigners are to be excluded from the family and welfare benefits, estimated to bring in €18bn. The constitutionality of this measure will almost surely be challenged. Others estimate the benefits of a crackdown on benefits for immigrants at only €5bn. Another saving the RN is counting on is that with fewer migrants, security will improve, and that alone will save €2bn.
- The fourth pillar is a cut to France’s contribution to the EU by around €20bn. This is two thirds of its current contribution, including customs duties paid to Brussels. It would be an understatement to say that the EU is unlikely to agree to this. Unilaterally withholding funds would be the end of the EU and the euro. We would be intrigued to know how this measure would help to reassure the markets.
Questionable Revenue
- an increase in the tax on share buybacks to yield another €11bn, which would be 50 times more than currently.
- A promise of massive tax cuts for VAT on energy and food necessities that the RN has kept, costing €16bn and production taxes for €17bn.
- Genuine new measures and tax cuts add up to €69bn, against which the RN put a list of €136bn in questionable savings. A scenario where the deficit would rise under a Le Pen is not so far-fetched.
Will Anyone Care?
Will the public care at this point? The lack of awareness is stunning. All they want is change. As if the government can always find some magic money if only they look hard enough. Experience over the past decades has indeed been that France can get away with a lot. But the rise in French spreads suggest that this period may be coming to an end.
She also called on the ECB to cut interest rates. What can possibly go wrong?
No one ever cares about fiscal sanity in France or the US.
They all lie about growth, taxes, revenue, wars, and everything else.
France has gotten away with flouting EU budget rules but Greece didn’t. The reason is France is France. More accurately France is too big to bail.
But the EU has no love affair with Le Pen, so the crisis will surely come to a head in 2027, one way or another, no matter who wins.
French Budget Deficit Explodes Into a Major Debt Crisis and Riots
For further discussion of the fiscal rules France has ignored for decades, please see French Budget Deficit Explodes Into a Major Debt Crisis and Riots
The welfare state in France is coming unglued. An EU-wide crisis is coming.
“No one ever cares about fiscal sanity in France or the US.”
Does any country care about fiscal sanity?
If Le Pen prevails, France will go on a military spending spree in support of Trump and his merry gang of war mongers… The budget blowout will be spectacular!
Actually the commie candidate Melanchon’s plan is much better: just tell the France’s creditor’s to “Mange de la merde”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has proposed cancelling approximately 18% of France’s national debt—roughly €448 to €544 billion held by the Bank of France—to free up funds for social spending. (With €3 Trillion to follow, comrade!).
That’s one way for the froggies to let Frankfurt know they are still browned off about the Franco-Prussian war.
Obviously it’s important for a politician to understand economics, just as it’s important for a politician to have a grasp of military matters.
Not being French, I don’t know how much grasp Marine le Pen really has of the subject, but in Australia we have a similar lady, who is the head of a political party that is seemingly rising.
Her name is Pauline Hanson, and her party is called One Nation. She got her start back in about the year 1998, when she was a candidate for our Liberal Party (a right-leaning party by American standards, roughly analogous to your Republican Party), and was expelled on the eve of the elections for being too truthful and frank about Asian immigration. The Liberal Party could expel her, but it was too late for them to get her off the ballot or endorse an alternative candidate, and she went on to win the seat. I should explain that the seat was a left-leaning one (safe Labor – the equivalent of safe Democrat in the U.S.A.), and she had never been expected to win it, but the working-class voters, seeing that she was being shabbily treated by a corrupt establishment that didn’t care about them, and, like your politicians, mostly didn’t care about civilization either, took a fancy to her.
She went on to have ups and downs, including being jailed and then released on appeal. Her career really demonstrated the abject degeneracy of our establishment, just as I think the careers of Marine le Pen and her father have demonstrated it in France.
What is interesting at present, apart from the fact that Pauline Hanson’s group seem to be on the verge of breaking into the big time, just as the Front Nationale are in France and the AfD are in Germany, is that she was persuaded at various times to adopt really stupid populist economic policies by various smooth talkers who ingratiated their way into her confidence. She once proposed a “debit tax,” whereby a minuscule charge on every debit entry in a bank account would be enough to do away with all other taxes, and fund the government effortlessly.
My point is that political parties that grow out of the grass roots can outgrow such silliness. There will no doubt be splits and expulsions, just as we have had many such in One Nation in Australia. I am not a member any more, because it has compromised too much on protecting civilization from immigration for me, but I still support it against the establishment degenerates.
I am not optimistic about the future of civilization, but you have to give credit to people who are trying to save it. Now if only some group of military officers would hold a coup and execute every judge, every head teacher, everyone who makes a living by lies and by intimidating the public……
How much is France’s share of the EU billions contributing to the war in Ukraine?
Has France succumbed to Trump’s demand that European countries spend 5% of GDP on its defense budget?
Maybe rejecting military madness is the answer.
At the end of the day, France will have to use an adjustment package that is similar in size and spirit to what Portugal did during 2011-14. This could avoid a Greek-style political crisis, allow the ECB to keep its financial channels open, and unlock EU funding to bridge shortfalls in fiscal financing. Unfortunately, the French, like other countries before, will only play (adjustment) ball once they stare into the abyss.
If France cannot straighten out its budget, will that mean the collapse of the Euro?
That’s why the Brussels bureaucrats (EU and NATO) want the Ukraine war to continue and even expand onto NATO territory. The Euro is inherently unstable, since debt issuance isn’t centralized. So, it exacerbates centrifugal forces and threatens the EU itself. Only war can unite Western Europe and keep the bureaucrats in their sinecures. If more Ukrainians have to die to sustain salaries in Brussels, well, that’s just a price they’ll have to pay.
Is there any EU country that abides by the budgetary norms of the EU?
No. Nobody of influence and authority would allow it, and they will run roughshod over any law, norm, right, etc. that is in their way.
It would be more sensible for Germany to make a deal with Russia, using Germany’s technology and Russia’s resources. Germany has been desperately trying to make a market for itself by offering all the Southern Europeans vendor finance, and that can’t work in the long run. Getting out from under the European Union and the Anglosphere would also mean that Germany would no longer have to import depraved Anglosphere morals, that is if they are not so entrenched now that there is no going back.
This would be sensible, as germany and Russia are natural allies. Each has what the other wants and can best get through exchange.
However, the Americans never would allow it, nor would the german political class.
Tangentially, as the G7 led by France, has agreed to release 100 million barrels of diesel from their reserves over the next 4 months, B4Ni.DE, diesel proxy, has increased 3-4% for each of the preceding 2 days, eclipsing its previous record high. Expect US diesel prices movement to eclipse its previous national average of 6.52 a gallon record. The globally under-performing French CAC composite touched its 16 Mar 2020 to 7 April 2025 trend line today. That will breached over the next 2-3 trading days.
Meanwhile in Israel, Netanyahu’s Likud party is projected to lose 2 seats in the Knessett. Unfortunately, even if Netanyahu’s bloc falls short of a 61-seat majority, he can effectively retain power through structural gridlock.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-election-s-2026/artc-i24news-poll-netanyahu-and-eisenkot-fall-while-bennett-rises-full-poll
NEW INSTRUCTIONS FROM OUR OWN GENIUS!
Trump: “The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Thoughtcrime!
I thought that was a joke.
Will we get show trials of AI tech bro “enemies” who inadvertently blurted out “AI”?
“Super Intelligence” completely fails to work as a descriptive term. He can’t leave his grubby mind and hands off anything or anyone.
I’m surprised he didn’t change the name to “Trump Intelligence”
super duper trump intelligence
France (2nd largest economy in EU) is finished.
EU is finished.
Only one recession away.
How is France and others going to revive their economy?
That recession is coming soon. Trump induced global recession is around the corner.
A harmonious Europe was as finished as it could be, in 1914. And in 1939. French politics was a mess through the 1930s. France was overrun by Germany in 1940 (oh yeah, 1871 too). The Yanks and Soviets overran them all, each trying to impose their own order. France had a wrenching loss of colonies in the mid-20th century. Yet here they all still are.For all that, they are no less silly and annoying. I have to kind of admire it. Who knows?
That is, when the colonial powers had exhausted their colonies of resources, or when the good stopped going, they turned on each other, as they have always done for a millennium.
The colonies were mainly for the capturing of markets, not for the exploitation of resources.
Thatcher Margaret famously said: “The problem with capitalism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Here’s Thatcher’s actual quote:
“I think they’ve legacy’d us an awful lot of debt. Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalize everything, and it’s just total inefficiency.”
In the famously freedom-loving and entirely capitalist United States (flag salute, everyone!), they call it “public private partnerships”, “defense contracting”, “no-bid contracts”, “TARP”, bailouts, etc..
Not “socialism”, because that would be bad.
Not to mention calling it “socialism” might cause the average frustrated American to ask where’s his cut of the action, when everyone know that’s reserved for the Epstein Class.
And “government private partnerships” sounds truthfully bad too.
Economies are about investment and money flows (people buying stuff). If your policies aren’t improving those things, you don’t stand a chance.
Wrong. Economies are about creating value. Digging and covering ditches adds no value to the economy, in spite of money changing hands.
The top 4 ways wealth is created is still: Mining, Manufacturing, Farming and Fishing. All of which are under ongoing attack by the Enviromental Mob.
I’m sorry if environmental laws get in the way of their razing the environment to the ground to increase their wealth. No, not really.
Well it is about the way the value of activity is measured. Governments can subsidize a few guys to dig and cover ditches, zero value, but it counts as GDP. If those guys would visit their old grandpa, happily listening to some stories again, it can have so much value but it doesn’t count towards the GDP.
You missed the word “flows”. What if the guys getting paid to dig ditches spend the money on things that create value? Giving investors the income to expand those value creating activities at lower cost and hire the ditch diggers? Investments that might not happen if there were inadequate flows to begin with?
“If your policies aren’t improving those things, you don’t stand a chance.”
Except that everybody has to take a chance on the next bandwagon of grifters, amidst the last pile of wreckage.
C’mon people don’t you look so down,
You know the rain man’s comin’ to town,
To change your weather, change your luck,
And then he’ll teach you — how to — f-f-f
find yourself
Doors, L’America
Breaking news: Trump says he won’t strike Iran now to elections!
Lol. Guess oil shooting up to the moon changed his mind. Too late though, massive profitgasms for those investors positioned for Trump’s ineptness.
I guess oil shooting to the moons of Jupiter AFTER the election is ok, good thing he’s telegraphing that now.
Settle down everybody. Bibi still has Trump’s number, and Trump thinks suckerpunches are a sign of his cleverness.
Have to give them time to nuke Los Angeles and San Diego?
No one in Iran trusts Trump further than their smallest child can throw him
You lost me at “Trump says”.
This is a cynical (or crazy) level of cheap, fake promises. Are democracies ungovernable now, due to the electorate’s dreamy demands for feel-good fraud from leaders (else, the leaders are dumped)? The USA and France are interesting examples.
If you want to understand how an oligarchy works, that is, the so called “West”, read “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” by Karl Marx.
Can’t speak for france, but in the US there is a small group that has outsized power that doesn’t make it feel like a democracy at all.
Nobody of influence and authority would tolerate an actual democracy for long.
Correct. Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
LePen sounds like almost every American politician when they are forced to answer a question about the national debt
Bring in Randi Weingarten to improve their schools.
The native French are ready to riot and will when their pensions are shaved eventually. There will be no GDP growth at all- with strikes, riots and increases in inflation.
The non -native immigrants all come to France which has absolutely nothing for them to do except live in squalor in the Banlieues.
Marx called it the “Reserve Army of Labor” where you have a massive bunch of people competing for the same jobs-encouraged by the corporations and corrupted state. Except the French do not like to work and the immigrants are not educated well enough to do those supposed jobs that are going to grow GDP in France. GDP and the word,”France” are like saying the Yankees and the BoSox are going to play on the same side. The country is going 👇
USA, Britain and France imported labor to enable a free ride, with the casual class having its feet up and its mint julips served cool, while the laborers did every unpleasant thing. Except the ride has not been free: the bills are coming due. These countries have one or another kind of indigestion, trying to digest this huge intake. But nobody wants to pay a commensurate price for the privileges. High and low, everybody wants more free stuff, and somebody else to take on more of the costly ungainly parts.
Trump’s variant to deal with this legacy we took upon ourselves is to expel the Hispanic ones. But then who will do the roofing and dig up the concrete in the warming outdoors? Who will tend to our aged? Etc. Trump’s answer was and is unworkable. Somebody needs a middle path maybe. More monitoring, maybe some kind of work permits, they did in the 60s here in California. But those are complicated and hard to sell to masses of idiots. Rage and bumper sticker shouts apparently work now.
The difference is that these Mexican laborers are actually employed and invited to work here. The only argument is about documentation and benefits. I can tell you most of the people you see in Paris streets are not working. It’s not their fault, they were invited and then the french economy is such a basketcase they have no work. The lucky ones get the crappy jobs-the rest are living on the Seine river in a tent.
I would rather have Mexicans come into the country than try and employ our homeless and drug-addled miserables. Can we swap?
Lots of idle high school labor available for low skill jobs. My teen aged kids struggle to find any kind of work at all. That’s due to min wage laws of course because you can’t employ those kids for $10 and under anymore. So we lose out on cheap labor and the next generation of kids don’t learn any skills at all.
When I was a pre-teen I had a paper route. As a teen I bagged groceries, pumped gas (plus making change / doing credit card receipts etc), did farm labor etc. Other teens I knew worked in fast food (it was an entry level job then, not a way to feed families for 30 and 40 somethings), construction (clean up type stuff), hotel maids and so on. No reason teens today can’t do those jobs again as we get rid of illegals. Just need to relax min wage rules for them so they can be hired at a price that makes their contributions make sense.
Minimum wage in Texas is $7.25. So such laws have nothing to do with your kids being unemployable for $10.
I live in Florida. Min wage here is 15.
Since when do voters care about anything but cliches and slogans?
Some voters do. A wise man who had some background in sales once told me that you never want to over-estimate the intelligence of the public, but you never want to under-estimate it either. I suppose if you do, they figure you out, and then you pay a pretty steep price.
That might work in sales, but the record of elections in the last century proves that you must count on the stupidity of most voters.
If you can’t convince them … confuse them with bullshit … LePen’s time has come … could she possibly be any worse than Macron ?
Obviously yes. She will be vastly worse than Macron, just as Trump and his cabinet are vastly worse than Biden and his cabinet.
If it was obvious no one would vote for her.
We can’t know for sure until she’s elected. But unlike the US, you aren’t guaranteed to remain in power for 4 year unless you get a majority which is not likely.
France is full of contradictions. They force children to do philosophy up until 18 but teach a rigorous interpretation of the relevant texts. Any idea of thinking for yourself is strongly opposed. This seems to be missing the point of teaching this subject.
The outcome is that French people find it very difficult to analyse things beyond a collective view of things.
Macron did a relatively good job but they all hate him. You are correct that the French want change but only change that gives them longer holidays and earlier retirement.
“They force children to do philosophy up until 18 but teach a rigorous interpretation of the relevant texts. Any idea of thinking for yourself is strongly opposed. This seems to be missing the point of teaching this subject.”
European elite education in general. Critical thinking is not encouraged. Socialization, learning the approved narratives and parroting them back is stressed.
As a result, the average frustrated european is better educated, after a fashion, than his average frustrated American counterpart, BUT when thrown a situation or person that doesn’t fit the stereotypes and narratives that were taught to them, the european is at a loss.
America is the only place I am aware of where the individual is celebrated, and independent individual thought is considered a good thing
In Japan they have a famous saying that “The nail that sticks up must be pounded down”
There is an entire swedish philosophy based around “don’t think you are any better than the group”.
Sort of like how right-wingers pound down Mamdani and AOC?
Neither are left-wingers.
That makes Europe sound a lot like Australia.