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Nicolas Baverez
Epidemics, like great economic crises and wars, are accelerators of history, which redefine the hierarchy of individuals, businesses and nations. The Covid-19 was thus the ruthless revealer of the downgrading of France, which has accumulated three crises. A public health bankruptcy with 30,000 deaths and a persistent inability to test, isolate and care which leaves the country at the mercy of a second wave – with the fiasco of the Covid-19 application as a symbol which was never downloaded only by 3% of the population and only identified 14 cases at a cost of 200,000 euros per month -. The deepest recession in the developed world with an anticipated drop in GDP of 12.5% of GDP, mass unemployment affecting more than 12% of the working population and public debt of 121% of GDP at the end of 2020. A crash of public freedoms and a de facto suspension of justice during the state of health emergency. The French, who thought they were protected by the state which absorbs 56% of the GDP, went from astonishment in the face of confinement, which they thought was reserved for China or Italy, to anger. Four illusions have vanished: the belief that the health care system is among the best in the world; the certainty of being a developed country mastering high technologies; faith in the state to manage crises and reassure the nation; the existence of a balance of power with Germany. The result is immense distrust of institutions and leaders, which is reflected in the multiplication of criminal procedures targeting them. France is far from being the only western democracy to have cultivated denial in the face of the drifts of globalization, of the growing dependence on Chinese total-capitalism, of bubble capitalism, to the rise of threats emanating from the jihadism and democracies. The distribution of fictitious income or dividends, the impasse on security, the paralysis of representative institutions, short-sighted nationalism and the abandonment of populist temptation have been widely shared, including in the United States and the United Kingdom. -United. However, the situation in France remains specific because it combines the inability to respond to the shocks and risks of the 21st century with the consequences of four decades of dropping out. Potential growth and productivity gains have become virtually nil. Full employment has never been restored since the mid-1970s, when public debt increased from 20% to more than 120% of GDP in forty years. The state is obese and helpless, its sovereign functions being cannibalized by social transfers. The nation is in tatters, undermined by communitarianism, class hatred and the rise of violence, which erupted in broad daylight with the movement of yellow vests and then the strikes against the pension reform project. The legitimate commitment in favor of a powerful Europe is discredited by the country’s drift, which also opens up vast spaces and great hopes for demagogues.
The Covid-19 epidemic is thus part of a long series of crises which, since the oil shocks, have seen France, far from recovering, descend each time an additional step: during the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s ; after 2001 when Germany reformed thanks to the 2010 Agenda launched by Gerhard Schröder; in 2008 and 2011, during the crash of globalization and then the turmoil of the euro zone, with the calamitous choice of the explosion of public debt and the fiscal shock of the years 2010-2012 associated with the budgetary austerity of the Union and the ECB interest rate increases in 2008 and 2011. France is now in Italy’s situation on the eve of the coronavirus epidemic. It is threatened with losing definitively the control of its destiny with an aging population, a long stagnation, massive structural unemployment, an out of control public debt which will quickly tend towards 180% of the GDP. And even more than Italy, France represents a systemic risk for the European Union and the euro zone. The country has no choice but to borrow, for the second time in twelve years, 20% of its GDP in an attempt to modernize its economy and its society. It will also be able to benefit from the Union’s recovery plan, which acts as a healthy awareness and mobilization of Europe. But this is his last chance. In 2008, the bank crash had been well managed but the exit from the crisis failed. In 2020, we must succeed in emerging from the crisis when the management of the epidemic has been failing. All the more so since the solidarity of the northern countries of the Union only makes sense if it is put at the service of the development of the southern countries and not of the continuation of their fall, which supposes that they treat their structural ailments. For France, this implies the radical transformation of its economic and social model and the reconfiguration of the State, which has become a risk multiplier. As in 1945, France is therefore faced with a cardinal choice: the renewal of the errors of the past – through statism, protectionism and Malthusianism in the name of a regressive conception of ecology – or the bet of reconstruction. The health and economic debacle must serve as an electroshock and promote awareness among leaders and citizens. For the former, it is the task of telling the truth about the instability of the world of the 21st century, the vulnerability of the country and the demands of the recovery which goes through the priority given to production, security and integration. For the latter, it is a matter of mobilizing and rallying around the changes essential to the recovery of France, which also conditions the future of Europe in the face of the empires vying for the domination of the 21st century.
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