Austerity for Immigration | The Nation

Even the premier’s overtures towards modest, temporary tax increases have seen a boiling over of tensions within the minority coalition in power. Macron’s allies have claimed that tax increases are a red line—even if the swelling of the budget deficit is in large part a result of Macron’s unfunded tax cuts adopted since 2017. These include the whittling down of a tax on large fortunes to a charge on real estate portfolios, the creation of a lowered flat tax on capital gains, and a slashing of the corporate tax rate to from 33.3 percent to 25 percent. When he left office in September, outgoing Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire boasted of the cumulative €55 billion in reduced taxes that he oversaw, warning that any reversal would mark a serious threat to businesses.

The scuffle is likely little more than a fight for optics between warring parties that find themselves momentarily sharing a cabinet and governing coalition. The Républicains, formerly the dominant party on the French right, have for years clamored over taxation, with all state liabilities on revenues hitting 43.2 percent of GDP in 2023. For legacy purposes, Macron and his allies also want to allay anything that would appear to be a permanent break from the pro-business credo. Yet it could also be politically suicidal not to maintain the façade of balance. Temporary windfall taxes on large corporations and the highest revenue earners is an easy price to pay for the long-term, permanent squeeze on public spending and services viewed as the only way to restrain the deficit.

Seeking to improve the far right’s image in business circles, Le Pen also has an interest in toeing the line on economic policy. In response to Barnier’s general policy speech on October 1, Le Pen promised “to give [the PM] a chance, however slight.”

In return, the new premier has to be careful to curry favor with Le Pen, whose support will be crucial if Barnier is to survive in the coming months. The main olive branch up to this point was the appointment of the hard-right Républicains Senator Bruno Retailleau as interior minister—a job that includes domestic policing and immigration policy.

Retailleau is known to be vying to leave his mark on the county’s immigration system, perhaps through yet another omnibus reform law. This could be the chance to revive many of the harshest elements of a bill passed last winter with votes from both the Macronist coalition and the Républicains and Rassemblement National opposition. In January, parts of the law were thrown out by the Constitutional Council, however, causing uproar from the far right over judicial oversight and the hindering of parliamentary power. Open to a constitutional reform to allow harsher legislation on immigration, Retailleau has in recent weeks warned that a “multicultural society brings with it the risk of becoming a multiracial society” and that there’s nothing sacrosanct about the “rule of law.”

Macron and Le Pen—with Barnier as arbiter—could well work out some bargain over immigration and fiscal austerity. But new elections are still probably only a matter of time. Le Pen has come out in favor of new elections as soon as next summer when, constitutionally, the National Assembly can again be dissolved.

Until then, the New Popular Front will probably be watching from the sidelines. Denouncing Macron’s refusal to consider an NFP government, the left will try to drum up popular opposition, although the first union marches and party-organized protests in September and October have been calm affairs. In the months ahead, the NFP’s most important challenge will be preserving its unity, containing the centrifugal tendencies in both the left-wing France Insoumise and the centrist Parti Socialiste. A wing of the center-left establishment—mainly figures not in parliament, revealingly—dreams of scuttling the alliance and drawing the centrist elements of the NFP into an illusory pact with Macron.

Even if unity can be maintained, the NFP is still struggling to pierce its ceiling of support in the broader population. For all the fireworks this summer, the electorate seems frozen in thirds and has largely remained so since 2017, with three blocs—a shaky left and center and Le Pen’s rising far right—jockeying for power. But maybe there’s a silver lining to Macron’s unofficial pact with Le Pen. The NFP really now is the only alternative.