French elections’ real risk: More of the same

PARIS — While much of Europe frets that an extremist victory in France’s presidential election could upend the EU, the country’s political and business elite is worried about something completely different.

Stasis — rather than chaos — is what concerns the civil servants, executives and diplomats who pull the strings in this highly centralized state. “The number one worry is not a victory for Marine Le Pen. Maybe we’re all just in denial, but few seriously believe she can win this time,” said a senior Treasury official, reflecting the views of many fellow graduates of the elite École Nationale d’Administration civil service college. “The fear is more that whoever wins will lack the legitimacy or the parliamentary majority to carry out long overdue reforms.”

Many, he said, are yearning for someone with the leadership skills — a De Gaulle or a Mitterrand — to galvanize the French behind a dynamic political vision. “Five more years of paralysis, high unemployment and next-to-no growth, and the country may be ripe for the National Front,” he said, referring to the anti-EU, anti-immigration party that Le Pen leads and her father created.

France’s administrative caste fears that neither of the two mainstream candidates in the first round of the elections taking place this week — independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and conservative Republican François Fillon — would be strong enough, if elected, to overhaul the country’s rigid labor markets, fix its costly pension system, slim down its bloated state and cut business taxes, red tape and public spending.

The country has spent more than two decades at a virtual standstill, after a 1995 general strike defeated newly elected center-right President Jacques Chirac’s bid to overhaul public sector pensions and health care. In that time, France has fallen further behind Germany in economic power and political influence, fueling a sense of decline and waning sovereignty. That helps explain the extraordinarily high levels of pessimism regularly recorded in a country which, seen from the outside, still has an enviable standard of living, impressive public services and outstanding corporate champions.

“Neither [Fillon nor Macron] would have the authority to impose change on a highly resistant society” — Treasury official

Macron, 39, who was economy minister under Socialist President François Hollande before resigning last year, is currently vying with Le Pen for first place in opinion polls. But while he has youth and optimism on his side, the former investment banker is seen by many of the elite as lacking the backbone, political experience and coherent parliamentary majority to implement his reform plans. His movement, En Marche! (On the Move), was created barely a year ago, and its parliamentary candidates are little known to the public.

“Macron has yet to give a convincing answer to the question: who would you govern with,” said a defense official. The political novice might end up having to “cohabitate” in power with a conservative-dominated legislature after parliamentary elections in June, or form an uneasy coalition with a center-left faction of the divided Socialist Party.

Fillon, 63, a former prime minister, is seen by many as having been fatally wounded by revelations that he paid his wife and children nearly €1 million of taxpayers’ money to do largely invisible jobs as parliamentary assistants. Even if he clawed his way into the run-off (he is currently polling in third or fourth place), it’s hard to see how the conservative Catholic could convince citizens to make the tough sacrifices he is proposing — later retirement, longer working hours, fewer civil servants.

“Neither of them would have the authority to impose change on a highly resistant society,” the Treasury official said. “A lot of my colleagues see Macron as a clever marketing product rather than a leader with a coherent program. And Fillon just seems to be morally disqualified.”

Like most of the people interviewed for this column, the official spoke on condition of anonymity because the civil service is supposed to be politically neutral and will have to serve whoever wins the May 7 run-off.

One or two French diplomats, approaching the end of their term, have defied convention and spoken out. Paris’ ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, told the Washington Post that a Le Pen victory would be “a total disaster” and lead to the collapse of the EU, the break-up of the euro and a financial crisis. The French envoy to Japan, Thierry Dana, said in Le Monde that he would not serve under Le Pen.

But a few days before the first round of voting, none of those I questioned in the presidential administration, finance ministry, central bank, foreign ministry, defense establishment and business community believed Le Pen, credited with about 23 percent in the first round and up to 42 percent in the run-off, would win the election. “The situation is not that desperate,” another French ambassador said. “The middle classes have a lot to lose. They won’t vote for her en masse.”

Several well-placed officials said there has been no contingency planning for the eventuality that Le Pen, who has advocated pulling France out of the euro and possibly the EU, or hard leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has risen to third place by advocating a radical renegotiation of the EU’s fiscal rules and the European Central Bank’s mandate, might win.

Voters feel like victims of a predatory globalization forced on them from outside, notably by the EU.

And the markets seem to have followed suit. There has been no sign of capital flight so far, and the risk premium between French and German government bond yields indicates higher than normal uncertainty but not panic. “It’s too soon,” a finance official said. “If such planning were to take place, it would be held very tightly among a handful of officials in the Bank of France, the ECB and the Treasury to try to avoid leaks, and it would only be in the first week of May if it looked like Le Pen had a real chance.”

Some senior civil servants acknowledged that they were still not sure who they would vote for in Sunday’s first round, but none believed that both Macron and Fillon would be knocked out, leaving a run-off between the two anti-establishment firebrands of the far right and far left. Mélenchon’s steady rise in the polls, to around 20 percent by last weekend, has prompted some media speculation of such a nightmare scenario for the French elite.

Marcel Gauchet, a historian and philosopher who analyzed the national funk in an essay last year entitled “Understanding the French Misfortune,” argues that voters are gloomy above all because of the absence of any collective political project that would justify individual economic sacrifices. They feel like victims of a predatory globalization forced on them from outside, notably by the EU, which is eroding their living standards, job security and national identity.

“What is special about the French in the making of the modern era is the primacy given to the political dimension,” Gauchet argues. However strong the case for economic reform, the French will cling to their acquired benefits and reject change unless they are inspired by some overarching political vision.

So far, however, neither of the mainstream contenders seems to have found the magic key to unlock the country’s multiple blockages and “make France great again.”

Paul Taylor writes POLITICO‘s Europe at Large.