Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen scrapped Wednesday with figures and accusations on employment, energy, or even the balance sheet of the outgoing president during the debate between the two rounds. Back to a selection of disputed assertions.
“600 billion” of debt, a third linked to the Covid?
According to Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron would be responsible for an inflation of the public debt of 600 billion euros, of which only a third would be linked to the Covid crisis. The president-candidate assured that it was “completely false” but he is contradicted by the figures. According to INSEE data, public debt (State, Social Security, communities) actually widened by 558.8 billion euros between 2017 and 2021.
According to an estimate contained in the 2022 budget, 165 billion are attributable “at whatever cost”, put in place during the Covid crisis, i.e. nearly 30% of this debt. The proportion mentioned by Marine Le Pen would therefore be realistic even if the government today figures the “Covid debt” at around 145 billion.
Emmanuel Macron also assured that only 200 billion of the increase in debt was attributable to the state. However, according to INSEE, the state debt increased by 464 billion between 2017 and 2021. By subtracting the share of Covid debt, we arrive at 300 billion, an amount much higher than that mentioned by Emmanuel Macron.
Lowering VAT: the European pitfall
Marine Le Pen reiterated her desire to lower the VAT on all energy and in particular fuels from 20 to 5.5% – and in a “sustainable way”.
However, this would be contrary to a European directive which lists around twenty goods and services on which a Member State can apply a reduced rate. Fuels are not included.
France could pass in force but would expose itself to sanctions from the Commission. Marine Le Pen’s team assures her that she could convince her partners to classify fuels among basic necessities.
On the other hand, European law allows VAT to be lowered on fuel oil, gas and heating on the sole condition of consulting a committee attached to the Commission for an opinion.
Drop in unemployment and statistical dispute
These are two competing calculations. Marine Le Pen was “doubtful” about the importance of the drop in unemployment claimed by Emmanuel Macron. The RN candidate criticized “extremely disputed” figures from the International Labor Office (ILO), citing those of Pôle Emploi instead. “No one counts categories B and C of unemployment (from Pôle Emploi, editor’s note) since they are partially active“, retorted the outgoing president.
What are we talking about ? The figures within the meaning of the ILO, regularly given by INSEE, refer to people who are totally unemployed.
The figures from Pôle Emploi are divided into several categories, in particular A (totally unemployed people), B (people who have exercised a reduced activity of 78 hours per month) and C (people who have exercised an activity of more than 78 hours ). According to the ILO, the unemployment rate fell from 9.3% to 7.4% of the active population between the first quarter of 2017 and the end of 2021.
If we focus on category A of Pôle emploi, there are 413,000 fewer people in this category over the same period. But if we choose to add categories A, B and C, we identify “only” 154,500 fewer job seekers. This is Marine Le Pen’s argument to put the figures into perspective.
The father of the carbon tax
“You have chosen to implement the carbon tax, which has increased the price of gasoline“, launched Marine Le Pen to Emmanuel Macron. But it is a measure that dates back to 2009 and which was born under the five-year term of François Hollande.
Nicolas Sarkozy had unsuccessfully tried to introduce it during his five-year term (2007-2012) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It will finally be introduced in the 2014 budget under François Hollande and was to increase gradually each year until 2022. But faced with the movement of “yellow vests”, the government backtracked in December 2018 and froze its increase.
Mayors and rural classes
Emmanuel Macron assured to have “ended the closure of classes without the agreement of the mayor” in rural areas. “Each time there has been consultation with the mayors and that has never been the case before. That has been since 2019”, he detailed. This assertion, immediately challenged by Marine Le Pen, needs to be qualified.
At the start of the school year in September 2020, the ministry had imposed this rule in rural municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants, to take into account the “exceptional” context of Covid.
However, the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer had relativized the scope of this “doctrine” before the Senate in February 2021, indicating that this rule was only valid for the start of the school year in September 2020 and that it “could not apply to subsequent years”, so as not to put in place a “moratorium forever” on class closures.
President Macron appears to have confused his 2019 pledge not to close schools without the mayor’s approval.
Macron underestimates the number of posted workers
“On posted work there are not hundreds of thousands of workers, there are around 500,000 tasks in France corresponding to around 50,000 posted workers“, said Emmanuel Macron, about these employees sent to another EU member state than the one where they usually work to carry out a temporary mission.
A report from the Ministry of Labor in June 2021 nevertheless estimates that for the year 2019, 261,300 employees were seconded at least once to France, excluding road transport.
These employees, who can carry out several assignments during the same year, carried out a total of 675,300 secondments. Several presidential candidates claim that this mechanism makes it possible to circumvent the labor laws of member countries.
The RN and Ukraine
The financial aid provided to Ukraine was at the heart of a skirmish between the two candidates: Emmanuel Macron assured him that the RN MEPs would have “opposed” this financial aid, which Marine Le Pen said. disputed.
In fact, eight days before the Russian invasion, on February 16, 2022, RN MEPs voted unanimously against a 12-month EU loan to Ukraine worth 1.2 billion euros. euros, which did not prevent its adoption.
On the other hand, the RN elected representatives in the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the sanctions taken on March 1 against Russia but did not take part in the vote on a resolution calling for a total embargo on imports of oil, fuel coal Russian nuclear and gas.