Is François Bayrou doing too much on public debt?

What if the proposed remedy were to make matters worse? The problem: France's budgetary situation. It is indeed nothing to be envied and weighs heavily on the country's overall economic situation. François Bayrou, the Prime Minister, a guest on TF1's 8 p.m. news this Wednesday , repeated this once again. "Is it serious? Is it urgent?" he asked, referring to the scale of the debt that is "crushing the country" in an "unbearable way." "Can we agree on the seriousness of things?" he insisted. His remedy has been known since the beginning of the summer: save €43.8 billion in the next budget , take it or leave it, since the Prime Minister announced on Monday that he would appear before the National Assembly on September 8 to deliver a general policy statement, and thus request a vote of confidence from the deputies.

A political decision that is paradoxical, to say the least. It is politically risky, to say the least, with the head of government having virtually no chance of surviving it . Even if François Bayrou on TF1 pretended to believe it. But it is also economically dangerous, in any case contradictory. This is what the business leaders we met at Roland-Garros during the Medef back-to-school days told Libération . In short, they are playing from the back of the court, that is to say, by taking the least possible risks. By putting 1 euro back into the pool of political instability, François Bayrou is feeding what business leaders hate most: uncertainty. This is also, with some nuances, what the economists we consulted say . While none of them claim that France's debt situation is not a concern, they put serious reservations on the strategy of extreme dramatization of the economic situation chosen by the executive. François Bayrou, or the man who is actually digging the hole he claims to be filling?