No tax increases to finance the French rearmament, promised Emmanuel Macron. Even if, since the dissolution, the President of the Republic no longer controls the country’s tax controllers, he must be recognized a certain coherence, he who has tried since his arrival at the Elysée Palace to lower taxes in a country where compulsory levies reach a record (46.1 % of GDP). So no use of tax, but a wall of new expenses to be financed, if France wants to increase its military spending by 2 to 3.5 %, even 5 % of its national income. An increase between 45 and 90 billion euros per year. How to find this money, when the state funds are empty and the government endeavors to sell the financial market strategy to the financial markets, still embryonic? Undoubtedly in the pockets of households, with their consent, through a large national borrowing, or by supper savings booklets to the defense.
Ideas envisaged by the executive, even if the use of debt may precipitate the country in a critical area, especially if, underlines the economist Charles Serfaty (1), all European states do the same. “Interest rates will logically eventually increase.” Perhaps our rulers would be well inspired to look in the rear view mirror of the interwar period.
Between 1936 and 1939, France, confronted with the Hitlerian danger, initiated an effort of massive rearmament, first under the Popular Front, but especially from November 1938, with the Minister of Finance Paul Reynaud. Aware of the Nazi danger, he had warned a few months earlier, in the newspaper Paris-Soir: “We entered the non -bloody war area.”
From his appointment, he continued to build a war economy, bringing the defense effort to almost half of public spending. He also managed to soften the forty -hour weekly work regime, obtained by the Blum government. “Do you believe that, in Europe today, France can both maintain its lifestyle, spend 25 billion weapons and rest for two days a week?”, He launched on the radio in November 1938. He saber social spending, major works, assistance to local authorities and freezes the hiring of civil servants. A rigor kit which the Bayrou government could be inspired by. Economies on the one hand, military expenditure strongly increased (9 % of the GDP before the war) on the other: to finance this investment, Paul Reynaud launches “armaments” which, explains the historian and economist Laure Quennouëlle-Corre (2), “were very interesting tax, widely disseminated in the public, allowing citizen mobilization”. “Subscribe to armaments. We will be overcome because we are the strongest,” we could read on a poster of 1939 … Alas, for having denied too long the danger, on May 10, 1940, France was not ready.
(1) Author of Economic history of France (Past compounds, 2024)
(2) author of The denial of the debt (Flammarion, 2024)