Op-ed published in French in Les Echos.

While the barricades have yet to be dismantled, after weeks of staggering events, it’s clear to all that history must be written, and that Emmanuel Macron is an essential, if silent, protagonist. What can he do to emerge from the crisis? And afterwards, what can he do to restore lasting economic and social order?

The solitude of power must never have seemed so burdensome to our new President. We imagine him far from serene, sometimes busy with a noria of advisors and evening visitors with contradictory recommendations, sometimes pensive in front of news channel images, his chair tipped back and tie undone. Now that the barricades have not yet been dismantled, after weeks of shocking events that have seen simple French people rise from the ranks, feeling humiliated, then recognized in the ambiguity of a mobilization that has turned violent, it is clear to all that history must be written, and that Emmanuel Macron is an essential, albeit silent, protagonist.

In order to identify ways out of the crisis, it is necessary to identify its raison d’être. This is an immensely difficult task, given the chaos that surrounds us, but it does perhaps enable us to discern two deep-rooted causes: the failure of the French social and political model.

Causes & consequences

First and foremost, it’s the return of the social question: a sort of 1983, the “liberal turn” of François Mitterrand’s seven-year term, in reverse. While President Macron had focused on a supply-side economy, the beginnings of a rationalization of the SNCF and the ecological transition, she has put the issues of purchasing power, public services and tax pressure back at the heart of her agenda. In the dock, without a doubt, is the figure of the protective State: the implicit agreement between the French, who are keen on public spending, and their State, is the protection of employment and quality of life. At a time when taxes and social security contributions are approaching 52% of GDP – a European record – the quality of public services is steadily declining. The French are clearly not getting value for money. Like all hyper-socialized systems, the welfare state has become a machine for creating exclusion, unemployment and dissatisfaction. The ultimate injustice is that it is the most disadvantaged, the least politically integrated and therefore the most silent, who pay the heaviest price.

High levels of income inequality are perfectly acceptable in any society. This is not a political problem, but it becomes one when the hope of upward social mobility disappears completely for certain categories of the population. They are left with an inefficient social and public spending model, low purchasing power and no hope of any improvement for themselves or their children.

It’s also a crisis of representation. The subsequent mobilization of hundreds of thousands of non-politicized French people, gathered on Facebook for want of anything better, bears witness to the complete absence of organizations likely to represent them. Associations, unions, parties, are no longer sufficient to contain the expression of anger, to mediate it and to negotiate a balance of power with the government. The strength and weakness of the Gilets jaunes, their plasticity and multiplicity, make them incapable of building a negotiated political solution. Other movements of this type have preceded them, of varying form and degree, but with very similar modalities of action: the Arab revolts, Anonymous, the Orange or Rose Revolution, the Tea Party…

How to get out of the crisis?

The President has only two serious options for overcoming the institutional crisis, which it is possible to model without lapsing into political fiction. The departure of the Prime Minister or a reshuffle, both of which are unlikely to convince, given the President’s personal exposure. Also ruled out is a dissolution of the National Assembly, which would lead Emmanuel Macron to lose his majority and, ultimately, would not solve his personal equation either. A Machiavellian cohabitation could enable him to create a salutary distance, but given the shortening presidential term and his political DNA of action and results, it is unlikely to serve him well.

The first serious political option is the great social shift. Against a reformist, social-democratic or second-left political matrix, the President will do violence to his liberal fiber and release, quickly and intensely, to save his mandate and restore order, a social “gift” package that the French Gilets jaunes won’t be able to refuse. It’s a change of policy translated into concrete and immediate measures. In the short term, at least, it will mean raising pensions, raising the minimum wage and, why not, taking up Xavier Bertrand’s proposal for tax-free bonuses. A major concession would be the reinstatement of the wealth tax (ISF), considered an abscess of fixation. This social package, a denial of a policy based on budgetary conformity, must carry enough weight to act as a definitive extinguisher on the fire that is consuming the country. It will also buy time to pursue other structural reforms that the country needs and on which the President knows he has the support of public opinion, such as the reform of the SNCF’s status.

This may well have been the starting point for a second half of the five-year term oriented to the left, designed to recapture an electorate that had become distant since the President’s assertion of a center-right positioning. For a time, Emmanuel Macron may have thought of himself as the new strongman of the center-right, the virtual successor to Alain Juppé – but that time will now be past.

The second option is the referendum. As an institutional tool par excellence, it can be used to bolster a weakened legitimacy which, in any case, condemns his political room for manoeuvre. A test of power, of course, it must also be a useful response to mobilization, with an object that is intelligible and in touch with people’s concerns. First theme: the constitutional creation of a popular initiative referendum, at various levels, and the necessary digital tools. This is one of the most legible expectations of the Gilets jaunes movement: having spoken out, they no longer intend to return to their previous silence. On the other hand, the establishment of a significant dose of proportional representation in the National Assembly, to better represent the entire political scope.

This second scenario is of course preferable, although it would be difficult to avoid a part of the social package to restore order, while at the same time offering a political perspective: demonstrating through the ballot box that the French social system, based on uncontrolled spending, needs to change.

What’s next?

What’s the incentive to work for someone who receives only a very marginal additional income from work in exchange for subsidies? It’s a question of rebuilding an overly socialized, disempowering system, where individuals are unable to project themselves into the future, and where feelings of insecurity dominate. Contrary to what those in power think, the French Gilets jaunes are well aware of the profound changes taking place in the world and in technology. They know better than anyone that their jobs will be robotized. As Laurent Alexandre points out, AI will “manufacture” Gilets jaunes.

The solution proposed by the think tank Génération Libre, Revenu de Liberté (Liber), or basic income, which I prefer to call Allocation Universelle, is a concrete path to economic reintegration. This social “new deal” would rationalize public subsidies while making life paths more secure.

At the risk of breaking certain taboos, we must question our lack of economic sovereignty. The 3% convergence criteria within the euro will be untenable if we are to finance the necessary transformation of our State, while at the same time extracting a drifting section of the population from impoverishment. Paradoxically, reducing the civil service, reorganizing services and optimizing the State will initially be very costly: we’ll need to invest, finance civil service departures, fund our industrial priorities, and massively refinance our abandoned university system. What’s more, it would be unsustainable to obtain productivity gains and rationalize our public services, through efforts that are sometimes painful, without being able to prioritize our national companies when it comes to public procurement. Of course, this has to be a European concertation, which we can see from the British, Italian and Greek examples, is absolutely necessary and sometimes contrary to German orthodoxy.

Finally, the model of individual contribution to public life needs to be reinvented. The French want more control and political initiative. In addition to the necessary digital platforms and citizen referendums, we need to review our trade union model, which has been abandoned by its members. Renovating trade unionism, freeing it up to make it once again essential to social negotiation, means deregulating it.

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