But how will he pay for his latest promises?
ONLY IN FRANCE, perhaps, would the response to a social rebellion have been a three-month-long national conversation. At the Elysée Palace on April 25th, Emmanuel Macron at last presented the conclusions to his “great national debate”, which has taken him on a town-hall tour of the country and involved 2m responses from ordinary citizens.
Faced with a protest movement that began as a tax rebellion, Mr Macron also promised to lower the tax burden “substantially”. France currently levies a greater share of taxes—48.4% of GDP—than any other country in the European Union. He pledged to make €5bn of income-tax cuts, to be financed, or so he promised, by spending cuts and the closing of corporate-tax loopholes.
Mr Macron’s announcements left plenty of unanswered questions, most notably how he will finance the extra tax cuts and spending promises. His earlier measures, themselves costing €10bn, have already pushed up the government’s budget deficit to just over the 3% limit imposed by EU rules. Mr Macron did make it clear that the French would have to work longer over their lifetimes in order to finance pensions.
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