All over the world, political leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, artists, intellectuals, journalists, find in France qualities they refused to concede to her less than a year ago. They’ve rediscovered that our country has strong institutions; and that a determined president, supported by a strong parliamentary majority, can do a lot: France, the same France, has set herself in motion.
For once, our President, our government and our Parliament are the envy of the rest of the world, we must not deny ourselves the pleasure and give them credit for their action. In fact, the reforms already launched are embraced; as evidenced by this embrace, these reforms are among those, which have been awaited for a long time, and which many were enraged to see the last three Presidents of the Republic and the last four parliamentary majorities not undertake. These reforms will have a considerable impact on luring new investors to France, creating new ventures, and the launch of new large-scale projects. The reforms have already guaranteed us greater growth and lower unemployment.
However, one must be aware of the considerable risks of failures, and ensure that these risks are well taken into account. Indeed, not only can the international environment disrupt priorities, but domestic factors such as our administrative burden, our external deficit, combined with the exclusion of minorities and of the most vulnerable are still very present. Other threats could also arise: secularism could be called into question; the health system could implode; the prison system could be overwhelmed.
Contrary to popular belief, the executive and the legislature do not have much time to act: they have just begun to prepare the budget for 2019, which will in fact be the last budget without electoral interference of the five-year presidential mandate. They have, in fact, a year to launch the main reforms, not more. It is a very short time. Given the international context, which will be more and more troubled, the country will have to move forward at a forced march pace if it does not want to miss its final chance to regain its proper rank. Among these essential reforms, at least the following seven will have to be launched in the coming months:
• Eliminate all special pension schemes, at least for newcomers in these occupations.
• Reform the civil service and in order to do this, only officials that perform functions deemed to be independent (police, justice, army) should be recruited on status.
• Take back control of continuing education, vocational training, and apprenticeship from the regions and entrust them to the national education apparatus. This should allow for competition with a private sector that has yet to demonstrate its competence on the matter.
• Recognize the finalized unification of all the French communes into “communal communities”, in order to merge these communities into less than 2000 agglomerations and eliminate French departments, dividing their jurisdiction between regions and the new agglomerations.
• Accelerate the establishment of powerful and efficient health centres throughout the country, entrusting them with the task of primary prevention.
• Shift taxation of production toward environmental taxation
• Finally, and above all, set a real global agenda and policy to fight against all dimensions of material and moral misery of the weakest and marginalized, whoever they are: women, the long-term unemployed, the poorest retirees, persons with disabilities, the homeless, refugees and those inhabitants of forgotten hamlet.
Once the definitive parliamentary vote on these reforms is secured, it will be necessary to ensure the subsequent implementation orders are executed within six months. In other words, all the reforms will have to come into effect on July 1, 2019, to have a chance to have a visible impact before the end of this five-year presidential mandate. It is the price to pay for what could be the first mandate of this president.
