On the road that leads the National Rally (RN) from social populism to the shores of liberal conservatism, the leader of the far-right party, Marine Le Pen, has pulled a stone out of her pocket: the summary of her economic proposals for the world of work. A detailed document in four parts that is neither a clarification nor a denial, but whose overall reading – and, above all, the absences – outlines a way of thinking.
Its publication on Saturday, September 14, at the opening of the back-to-school seminar for RN deputies in the National Assembly, allows the party to give an appearance of seriousness, after the document was drafted in the fall of 2023, finalized in the spring of 2024 and hidden during the electoral period of the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7. Publishing it, the far-right party explained at the time, meant exposing itself to inevitable criticism.
The brochure appears to be intended to respond to a large part of the demands of the business organisations to which it is addressed. “Part of the reservations of business leaders towards us is linked to the lack of knowledge of our program”Marine Le Pen regrets that this reshuffle of her proposals for the 2022 presidential election offers nothing new.
Costly proposals linked to household purchasing power (reduction of value-added tax (VAT) on energy, 0% VAT on basic necessities) do not appear there, but remain in the programme. They were included in a first, longer version, but the party chose to remove them. “the measures that we had talked about two hundred times and that were not linked to the business world, to highlight our other measures”explains its editor, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, RN MP for the Somme.
Intervene as little as possible
Other proposals that might offend business and economic circles have also disappeared. Neither the tax on share buybacks nor the tax on dividends appear. “excessive”nor the “single tax” cap introduced by Emmanuel Macron to limit the leakage of financial capital income: in 2022, Marine Le Pen planned to eliminate this advantage if capital income exceeded 60,000 euros. These three taxes, however, Mr. Tanguy regularly asserts, constitute the basis of a “Fiscal rebalancing towards the richest.”
Questioned on this point, the latter said that it was not a question of giving it up, although he was surprised by its absence in the leaflet. Questioned, Renaud Labaye, secretary general of the RN group in the National Assembly, also assured that Marine Le Pen “Do not abandon these measures”.
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