Macron, Le Maire feud flares up amid France’s fiscal woes

PARIS  — France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire is amping up the volume on the need to tackle the country’s deteriorating public finances. But his strident calls for deep public spending cuts are quickly getting on the French president’s nerves as the specter of a centrist defeat in the European election looms.

Le Maire’s ministry on Wednesday had to announce spending cuts of €10 billion for the second time this year , on top of the €10 billion already planned, and acknowledge that it has missed its deficit reduction goal for 2024. France’s revised deficit target for this year will now be 5.1 percent of the country’s GDP instead of its initial target of 4.4 percent.

As President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists face a probable thrashing in June’s European election, the last thing he wants to do is announce drastic cuts to social spending and public services. But that’s precisely what his finance minister has been advocating in recent weeks.

The budget spat is reviving old tensions between a president, who cannot run for reelection, and a minister whose presidential ambitions are an open secret. 

With ratings agencies assessing France’s sovereign debt rating this spring, Le Maire is desperate to rehabilitate France’s state finances as soon as possible, and restore his own image as a safe pair-of-hands, a key piece of his pitch as a potential presidential candidate.

Macron “can’t stand [Le Maire] anymore”, said a heavyweight from Macron’s Renaissance party, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly of a sensitive topic. “It’s physical, he’s going to ask him to hang from the ceiling to replace the punching bag!” with reference to recent photos of Macron taking a swing. 

Tensions between Macron and his most influential minister became palpable earlier this week, when the two clashed on how to implement the inevitable spending cuts. 

Le Maire irritated Macron by floating the idea of tabling a formal budget modification bill and submitting it to parliament, something the French president sees as a negative political signal as it would show the government was wrong about its growth and debt-reduction forecasts and is now backtracking. 

Last Sunday, Le Maire’s aides even reached out to several French lawmakers to pitch the idea. But the following Monday, the French president dismissed it and summoned Le Maire for a dressing-down at the Elysée Palace. Macron also crashed a meeting of his party coalition to warn them off tabling a new corrective budget bill for this year, as reported by POLITICO. “I’m hearing echoes of a new budget, but I don’t see the point of one,” Macron said, according to several French media outlets. 

On Thursday, Macron and Le Maire were expected to visit an explosives factory in south-western France together, in a bid to show a united front and put an end to the bad press in recent days, reports French daily Le Parisien.

Open bar is over 

After nearly seven years at the head of France’s powerful economy ministry, Le Maire has become Macron’s longest-serving minister and built himself a solid reputation at home and in Brussels. But, despite trying to win over French hearts, including by writing novels, Le Maire is still perceived as a technocrat at home. 

With storm clouds gathering over the French economy, it’s Le Maire’s legacy and future prospects in France or on the global stage that are on the line. He is still the most liked minister in the French government, though his popularity dropped by almost 10 percent since the beginning of the year, according to a recent poll by Ipsos. 

Over the past months, Le Maire has been drumming a single message home: France should tighten its belt and abandon the “whatever it takes” approach that has marked its economic policy since the COVID pandemic. 

“It can’t be an open bar anymore,” Le Maire said in a recent interview. “When we increase patient contributions on medical prescriptions, we’re saying it’s not open bar anymore, look at all the medication you have in your medicine cabinet,” he added.

Le Maire, a former heavyweight from the conservative Les Républicains, is now targeting France’s generous welfare policies including healthcare and unemployment benefits, a move that could trigger new protests and further erode consensus to Macron’s government ahead of the European election. 

Risk of backlash

With Macron’s Renaissance party trailing the far-right National Rally by more than ten points in the polls ahead of June’s European election, the French president is reluctant to do anything that might feed more discontent and anxiety in France. 

But there’s no easy way for Macron to fix France’s fiscal woes. The French president has vowed not to increase already high taxes and any drastic cuts in spending will make him even more unpopular. 

Macron is also reluctant to submit a new 2024 budget bill to parliament because it would expose the government to clear risks. Opposition parties, including the far-left France Unbowed and the conservative Les Républicains, have vowed to submit a no-confidence vote, which could trigger the downfall of the government. Instead, the French president wants to cut spending without submitting a new budget.

Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition lacks a majority in parliament since a parliamentary election defeat in 2022. | Bertrand Guy/AFP via Getty Images

Macron’s centrist coalition lacks a majority in parliament since a parliamentary election defeat in 2022, and while the government has survived acrimonious debates and no-confidence votes in the past, there’s a real risk of defeat this time around. 

“Your budgetary and economic policies are driving the country to the wall,” left-wing MP Eric Coquerel, who chairs the National Assembly’s finance committee, told his colleagues earlier this week.

He is not the only one to believe that Le Maire is partially responsible for the problem he is now trying to fix.

“Bruno, after all you have been in charge for seven years,” Macron reportedly told Le Maire according to participants at a meeting with key ministers at the Elysée Palace in March. 

Pauline de Saint Remy contributed reporting.