The French should work harder, to produce more and allow for future tax cuts to be financed. This is one of the answers, probably the one that will cause the most discussion, found by the French president Emmanuel Macron at the end of the Grand Débat, the confrontation between citizens and institutions (on social media, TV, but also live in the specifically set up citizen committees) which animated the last three months of the transalpine public scene. A dialogue made necessary by the protests of the gilets jaunes and which the president has decided to make official, allowing citizens from all over the country to express themselves on major issues political and economic current events: from wages to the environment, from taxes to immigration. Macron should have unveiled the results of this major consultation on the evening of thefire of Notre-Dame, but he rightly took another week of time, also taking advantage of Easter, to leave the shock behind him: he will only speak on live TV on Thursday, April 25th.
In the meantime, however, some hot spots have emerged from the French press which will inevitably be addressed on Thursday: if on the one hand it is clear that the president, a few weeks before the European elections, will make concessions to the population, on the other it seems that the tenant of the Elysée also want take the opportunity to also ask his fellow citizens for something for the good of France. And that something would be to work more: work more hours, produce more, in order to finance the likely promises of tax relief. In short, Macron would like the confrontation - apparently profitable - from the theoretical phase to continue in the practical one as well, and that is that the citizens themselves contribute to the changes they demand from politics. The ground for Macron has been prepared in the last month by repeated utterances from his ministers, who are also insistent on the need to work more, even if rather on the matter of postponing the retirement age, lengthening working lives.
What Macron will ask for instead it is also and above all to work longer hours: not to earn more, but to prevent taxes from remaining high or to prevent the state from being forced to raise them. From an economic point of view, the proposal makes sense, but from a political point of view it is decidedly risky: how will the French take it, in a country where the rule applies (barring conventional or collective exceptions) according to which a worker must work no more than 35 hours a week? The debate promises to be heated, even if for now the polls do not reveal "Bulgarian" indignation towards the proposal. According to Ifop, "only" 54% of French people are against it, even though pensioners were also questioned in the survey, who from their point of view ask for any solution that would secure public coffers and therefore their pensions. However, not even the young people under 35 were so negative, who ask to work "differently" but no less.
What is certain is that the cause for Macron will be difficult to plead, and according to the transalpine press it is causing discussion within the government majority itself. France is already wounded by months of fierce yellow vest protests and national mourning over what happened at the Parisian cathedral, and perhaps this is not the ideal moment to ask for sacrifices, just a few weeks before the European vote. Meanwhile, the Socialist Party and the other left-wing groups, as well as Marine Le Pen, have already said they would vote against a measure of this type. Instead, the Republicans, the main center-right party, would express themselves in favor.
