Will social issues emerge during the presidential campaign? After Emmanuel Macron’s intervention, Thursday, January 6, at the inauguration of the national congress of the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS), several candidates, mainly from the left, participated Friday afternoon in a round table organized for the second and last day of the congress by videoconference.
Thus, Anne Hidalgo (Socialist Party, PS), Yannick Jadot (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, EELV), Fabien Roussel (French Communist Party, PCF), the deputy Mathilde Panot representing Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France insoumise, LFI) took turns, for about twenty minutes each, to develop the major social measures of their program. The stakes are high for them, as the public debate has so far left little room for left-wing themes, thus partly making their campaign invisible. “We are at a time when the political debate does not correspond at all to the gravity of the situation”, lamented Mme Panot while “The associations point to an explosion of poverty such as we have not seen since 1945”.
Among the participants, the deputy Damien Abad (Les Républicains, LR) came to carry the voice of Valérie Pécresse, the candidate (Les Républicains, LR) traveling in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Although presenting differences with its competitors, in particular on the universal income for young people that it considers to be “A gas plant”, the president of the LR group in the National Assembly also criticized Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term and his social record.
Criticism of Macron’s broken promises
Thus, for Anne Hidalgo (PS), Emmanuel Macron’s policy was “Absolutely deplorable” especially becausee “that today the large public services that are the school and the public hospital collapsed after five years of Macron “ and “No longer play the role of shock absorber for the entire population, including the most vulnerable”. For Yannick Jadot, the environmental candidate, “In this five-year term, in the previous one and the one before, we have seen a form of permanent competition (…) with a desire to divide society and make the poor feel guilty ”. Damien Abad (LR), defended a right-wing social line. “There is an archipelago of French poverty, with new audiences who are affected, said the deputy for Ain. I am thinking of young couples or self-employed people, isolated elderly people, single-parent families, and at the same time, there has never been such great mistrust or sometimes even indifference to poverty. “
The day before, the Head of State had also mentioned single-parent families and single mothers. “We have set up, with Olivier Véran, a new service which guarantees the payment of alimony and prevents unpaid bills”, in particular for these “Single mothers who were in the blind spot of all public services ” and that “Revealed themselves in the public sphere” during the “yellow vests” crisis, according to the head of state.
The LFI deputy of Val-de-Marne Mathilde Panot insisted on the enrichment of the greatest fortunes at the end of the balance sheet of Mr. Macron that his group “Called very early “the president of the rich” ». According to her, these five years were those of“A massive transfer of money from the poorest to the richest (…) where the 500 largest fortunes have doubled their income under the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron ”.
One of the strongest criticisms of the opposition against the Head of State was the reduction of five euros in housing assistance announced in the summer of 2017 as well as the elimination of assisted jobs in the same year. . “When we look, we have on the one hand the enrichment of the richest with the abolition of the ISF [l’impôt de solidarité sur la fortune] and the “flat tax”, which cost five billion euros per year in the country and on the other hand, we have eliminated APLs, we have eliminated subsidized jobs for which associations have been very hard hit ”, sums up Mme Panot, adding “The abolition of the poverty observatory” on the balance sheet of the Head of State. United in criticism, the left has also stood out for its programmatic differences to eradicate poverty.
Income for young people, a matter of contention
Symbol of discord, universal income for young people. Yannick Jadot again defended the idea of creating a “Guaranteed minimum income automatically paid from the age of 18” around the poverty line estimated at « 880-885 euros » for “Eradicate great poverty”.
“I want to eradicate great #poverty. For that, I propose in particular an automatic citizen income from 18 years of… https://t.co/Gond7H2xVb
This automation is not unanimous on the left. Fabien Roussel, the Communist candidate, for his part wishes “Income from work”, unlike the proposal of the environmentalist candidate. “We want to eradicate poverty by eradicating unemployment”, he asserts, assuming “Differences on the left” on this topic. On the proposal of a “young RSA”, Anne Hidalgo had co-signed in June in The world a platform with several elected representatives of the PS to ask the State to be able to experiment with this proposal. A measure rejected by the executive at the time and by the Communist candidate today. “We put in our proposal the principle that young people must have access to solidarity allowances but we do not want to start from the principle that the RSA is a horizon of life for all the generations to come”, pleaded Mr. Roussel, for whom this income “Should no longer exist”.
Unsurprisingly, Damien Abad (LR) also rejected this idea, proposing instead “A young active income” of 670 euros for a qualifying training “In all the sectors which are in tension”. In addition, the deputy also put forward one of the flagship proposals of Valérie Pécresse’s social program, which targets single-parent families. “We want alimony to be tax exempt to restore purchasing power” to these homes in “Great suffering with significant childcare costs because of the failure of Emmanuel Macron’s early childhood policy”.
In the running for the presidential election, Eric Zemmour (Reconquest) and Marine Le Pen (National Rally) were not present or represented during this meeting in front of the actors of solidarity. Both were traveling on Friday in Eure-et-Loir and Béziers (Hérault) respectively.