The Prime Minister said in his consultations with the political parties that he was in favour of measures supported by the left, but which would antagonise the right and the centre.
This is undoubtedly a positioning that the left-wing parties did not expect – and the President of the Republic will probably be just as surprised. According to information from Le ParisienMichel Barnier would like to adopt some very marked left-wing measures and take up an argument very clearly heard in the ranks of the NFP: increase a certain number of taxes. “Barnier considers that since Macron there has been an unprecedented enrichment of the richest in France”, indeed slipped to the newspaper an LR source who participated in the consultations at Matignon in recent days.
The latter is more specific: “Michel Barnier is in favor of a tax on excess profits and the richest,” he says. This position, if confirmed and publicly assumed, could have the effect of a small bomb: taxing excess profits of companies and taxing the richest French are two measures in the program of the New Popular Front, which have even been erected as political priorities by the union of left-wing parties. And that’s not all: Michel Barnier would be “very tempted” to increase corporate tax in one way or another, and would have a listening ear to those in his entourage who advocate for the reestablishment of the ISF.
Le Parisien reveals above all the Prime Minister’s intention to find new revenues, while the question of the management of public accounts is now on everyone’s mind at the Elysée and Matignon. “I’m going to have to increase taxes, it’s not out of a light heart but I have to do it because the management is catastrophic”, Michel Barnier is said to have regretted to an interlocutor”. These remarks were not denied by the services of Matignon, who nevertheless specified to Le Parisien that “the only thing said by the Prime Minister is that he would not rule out moving in the direction of greater tax justice. That’s the only direction”.
But despite the reservations and the desire to say as little as possible, the tax milestones set by the Prime Minister seem increasingly clear. This is creating a lot of turmoil within the central bloc – which must participate in the government and within the LR deputies, whose group is led by Laurent Wauquiez, a fierce opponent of any tax increase. The Macronist elected officials are also wondering about the political line and the explicit agreement that Matignon expects from them: “Michel Barnier told me during our interview that he will increase taxes. We don’t know who, we don’t know his policy or his budget, and we have to go for it?”, wondered Gérald Darmanin, from the Ensemble pour la République group.