Unlike Italy, now safely relegated to fourth place in the league table of the biggest debtors, more than half of France’s notes are held globally. Just about every financial institution in the world has a pile of French government debt on its books.
Leaving Le Pen in charge of that would be like leaving a toddler alone with a can of petrol and a box of matches. Macron is at least a predictably safe pair of hands.
The trouble is, that is about the best that can be said for his second term.
Macron’s campaign was marked by a series of rash promises. He is proposing an EU-wide system of controls on executive pay (from which the UK will be thankfully exempt), but that would only drive managers and entrepreneurs from a continent that is already struggling to create new business and increasingly looks like an industrial museum.
He wants to spend billions of public money on creating new “digital champions”, a policy that has been tried and failed so many times it would be comical if it didn’t cost quite so much (the “quaero” search engine burned its way through half a billion euros before being quietly closed down, while Cloudwatt chewed up similar amounts to create a “cloud souverain”, whatever the heck that might mean).
And the same obsession with sovereignty has driven Macron to demand “buy European” policies that amount to little more than protectionism, trade barriers, and tariffs, dressed up in some fancy rhetoric.
Meanwhile, he has given up on any meaningful reforms. A plan to put up the retirement age to control the ruinous cost of state pensions was watered down as soon as it encountered any opposition; a reform of inheritance tax is so minor as to be meaningless; and France’s vast state, which consumed a Cuban-level 60pc of GDP at the height of the pandemic, will remain as much of a burden on the country’s dwindling productive base as ever.
In fairness, Macron managed a few reforms in his first term. Labour rules were loosened, leading to a reduction in unemployment, although it remains at twice the level of the UK.
