Some compliments sting like the thorns of a rose. The study by the very liberal Ifrap foundation showing that François Hollande wins the prize for the management of public funds, ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron, is one of those. The socialist rose has undoubtedly faded – and the exercise of power has something to do with it – but in the category of the right to inventory, it is worth revisiting the record of the last socialist president. Because there is Gerhard Schröder in François Hollande – at least before he tarnished his reputation in highly controversial Russian adventures. The former social-democratic chancellor had initiated powerful liberal reforms on which Angela Merkel, who succeeded him in 2005, surfed.
This is reminiscent of a very French story. The supply policy with the employment competitiveness credit? Marisol Touraine’s pension reform, hailed by all for its sense of balance and its realism? Myriam El Khomri’s labor law? The (slight) drop in public spending reduced between 2012 and 2017 from 57.1% to 56.5% of GDP? The return of the public deficit to the Maastrichtian range of 3% of GDP? The (famous) inversion of the unemployment curve? So many achievements by François Hollande.
“Every president works for his successor”, summarizes, not without a touch of bitterness, the predecessor of Emmanuel Macron, who, in front of the journalists of L’Express, prefers to emphasize his recorded social measures. History to suggest that he is at the same time the heir of Pierre Mendès France and that of François Mitterrand. “Disordered accounts are the mark of nations that abandon themselves,” warned the first. “My problem is not to act like a good deputy general secretary of the Communist Party, but like a first secretary of the Socialist Party wishing to serve his party”, confided the second to L’Express in June 1971, the day after the congress. d’Epinay.
The timid budgetary rigor initiated by François Hollande has been swallowed up by the Covid and the Macronian cash machine. As for the current Socialist Party, it lost the battle against the Melenchonist left. But where have the safeguards of social democracy gone?
