A few days before the first round of the 2024 legislative elections, TF1 organized a debate between Jordan Bardella (RN), Gabriel Attal (Renaissance) and Manuel Bompard (NFP). Pension reforms, taxes, minimum wage, VAT… Everything you need to remember.
Five days before the first round of the early legislative elections, representatives of the country’s three major political forces faced each other during a 1h45 television debate on TF1, Tuesday June 25. Jordan Bardella represented the National Rally (RN) and the Union of the Right coalition, Gabriel Attal was the voice of the presidential majority and the alliance under the Ensemble banner, and Manuel Bompard was chosen by the New Popular Front (NFP). Purchasing power, security, immigration, ecology and school were notably discussed. Here’s what to remember from the debate.
Increase in the minimum wage and VAT: purchasing power at the center of the debate
“We no longer want a France where elderly people have to go to Pôle emploi” indicated Manuel Bompard to launch this debate. And precisely, the purchasing power was one of the central themes of the discussions. The LFI Coordinator and candidate for the legislative elections under the banner of the New Popular Front promised to block the price of a basket of basic necessities. In addition, he again called for an increase in minimum wage to 1,600 euros, deploring “the biggest drop in purchasing power in the last forty years”. “If you increase the minimum wage today, if you increase, as we propose, the index point for civil servants by 10%, you will trigger a virtuous circle in the French economy”. He defended a “revival of popular consumption” to inject money “directly into the economy”.
The entire video debate
For his part, Jordan Bardella defended a drop in VAT.“I propose to act and reduce VAT from 20% to 5.5% on energy, gas, fuel oil and fuels.” He also assured that VAT on basic necessities “will be eliminated in the fall in the finance bill for 2025”. While the boss of the RN affirmed that “opening your bills or opening your mail is a source of anxiety for millions of French people”. Precisely, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal strongly attacked the reduction in VAT to 5.5% to 12 billion euros on energy products desired by the National Rally. “The measure you are proposing is not 12 billion per year, it is 17 billion per year” he indicated.
Gabriel Attal prided himself on not “lying” to the French. “I don’t want to make them believe in the moon,” he declared before defending “earn more and spend less”. “Earning more means that from now on there will be a golden rule to revalue pensions each year with inflation, as we did last January by around 5%. Earning more means freeing up salary increases”, explained the Prime Minister. In particular, he proposed lowering the electricity price by 15% next winter.
60, 62, 66 years old… Bardella and Bompard explain their pensions
The three debaters of the day were then invited to focus on another subject which is of particular interest to the French: pensions. “I am not going to do like my opponents here who promise everything before the elections in the hope of being elected,” said Gabriel Attal, before proposing “the establishment of a bonus/penalty on companies which lay off seniors “. The debate instead took place between Jordan Bardella and Manuel Bompard who had to detail their plan for pensions, the two political forces they represent being able to govern, according to the latest polls.
“My priority will be on long careers. I hope that from the fall, they will be able to leave with 40 years and a legal age of 60. That’s 1.6 billion euros,” declared Jordan Bardella who also mentioned a “pivotal age of 62” and retirement at “66” for those who “started working later”. For his part, Manuel Bompard explains that the New Popular Front wishes to “repeal the reform” of Emmanuel Macron and “reduce the starting age to 62”, specifying that the objective is then to bring it back to 60 at the end of the year. horizon 2027.
“I will be the Prime Minister of fiscal peace,” assures Jordan Bardella
“There will be no increase in French taxes,” assured Gabriel Attal once again on the TF1 set this Tuesday evening. The Prime Minister also did not fail to recall that the majority had abolished the audiovisual license fee as well as the housing tax. Manuel Bompard then refocused the debate not on lower taxes, but on who should pay them, before defending the “progressiveness” desired by his camp. While there are five brackets today, the New Popular Front wants 14. “All those who earn less than 4,000 euros net per month will pay less or the same amount of taxes as today,” he said. he explained, adding that there will be much more taxes “for the 8% and in particular for the richest 0.1%”. And the rebel points out that they currently pay “less taxes proportionally than the middle classes”, which is, according to him, not normal.
For his part, Jordan Bardella also promised that he would not increase taxes either. “I will be the Prime Minister of fiscal peace,” declared the leader of the RN, who then stated that he wanted to “exempt young people under 30 from income tax.” His goal? To prevent the “emigration” of talent. Enough to raise a few questions on Gabriel Attal’s side: “Who pays, in your model, [si] we don’t pay tax until the age of 30 and we stop working at 60?”, “Why should a 31 year old worker pay taxes and not a 29 year old trader?”
Heated debates on immigration
Asked about one of the key subjects of his program, Jordan Bardella estimated that “soil rights no longer have any meaning in a world of 8 billion people”. And the boss of the RN affirms: “Immigration is a major subject which upsets our identity, our security and the balance of public accounts.” Words that quickly made Manuel Bompard bristle. “You know, there are 19 million French people who have a foreign ancestor. That’s one in four French people,” he first said, before recalling Jordan Bardella’s own origins: “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, I believe that your political ancestors said precisely the same thing as what you say today.” And the representative of the New Popular Front defends: “Immigrants in France do not cost money, they bring in money over the last ten years.” Jordan Bardella also put back on the table his proposal to eliminate free healthcare for foreigners. The RN “wants that the acquisition of French nationality can no longer be automatic. I want to put a stop to this mass immigration”. Gabriel Attal wanted to return to the RN’s proposal to ban “sensitive jobs” for dual nationals. “The message you are sending is that when you are binational, you are half-national, you would not be real French people,” he said.
Security: juvenile delinquency as priority number one for Gabriel Attal
Questioned about security, Gabriel Attal denied having made juvenile delinquency his “priority”. This is evidenced, according to the Prime Minister, by the measures announced last April. Today, he wants to do more. “We need to be able to recognize the failure to fulfill a parental obligation much more regularly,” he mentioned in particular as an avenue for improvement. Gabriel Attal also wants “faster and more effective sanctions”.
“We need a security turn and a penal turn,” argued Jordan Bardella, who defended minimum sentences as well as the suspension of family allowances for parents whose children are repeat offenders. For his part, Manuel Bompard wants a change in logic and the reestablishment of “what worked: for example community policing”. Concerning minors, he maintained the fact that “we should not judge an adult like a minor”.
“School will be truly free from September”, promises Manuel Bompard
Gabriel Attal took responsibility for banning the abbaya in schools, indicating that he was “at heart to clearly reaffirm, through actions, the rules of the Republic”. Denouncing a media subject, Manuel Bompard estimated that “the problem at school is that there were no teachers in front of each class, […] that we have students who have great difficulty accessing school supplies and textbooks.” And to announce: “If you vote on Sunday for the New Popular Front, school will truly be free from the month of September.” Finally, Jordan Bardella said he wanted “each school staff who reports an incident to automatically benefit from functional protection”, “that mobile phones be banned” and insisted: “I want a big bang from authority”. .”
What place does ecology play in the debate?
Referring to the “challenge of the century” of the fight against climate change, Manuel Bompard stated that “we must do much more in the thermal renovation of housing”. Gabriel Attal defended the record of the presidential camp: “We have increased the budget for the ecological transition by 8 billion euros, […] we have reduced CO2 emissions by 20% in our country, this is unprecedented, because we are investing to support the French.” Finally, Jordan Bardella denounced the ban from 2035 on the sale of new thermal vehicles He also said he wanted to “remake France an energy paradise” thanks to nuclear power.