He is still not a candidate but he has already started to put forward his proposals for a second term. On the move or in an interview, sometimes with ambiguity, Emmanuel Macron distills clues to a future program 74 days away from the first round of the presidential election. Free admission to university, inheritance tax, pension reform, security... Here is what we know about a possible second term for the head of state.
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A pension reform for a second five-year term
This is the reform that he failed to complete due to the health crisis. But it could also be one of the first projects for a second term for Emmanuel Macron. Asked about TF1 in mid-December, the Head of State sketched out the outlines of his new project. Here are its main points:
> "There is now a funding problem, so it is clear that we will have to work longer," explained Emmanuel Macron, without mentioning a precise age for legal retirement. The Head of State assured that "this does not mean the same reality for everyone". According to him, "we must adapt this time of life at work on the one hand to the difficulties of certain tasks, and we must undoubtedly rethink what the work of seniors is."
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> "I don't think we should do exactly the same reform as the one that was envisaged," he also said.
> "We have to simplify our rules, moving towards an exit from special diets. There are 42 diets today. So, do we need only one, which was my initial project? I think it's too anxiety-inducing,” he noted. The Head of State then spoke of a "simplified system" with "roughly three major regimes", for "the public service, for employees and for the self-employed".
He doesn't want a tax increase
Who will pay for the debt resulting from "whatever it takes"? Emmanuel Macron assures him: as long as he is "in [s]es functions, there will be no tax increase". To pay the debt, the President plans to rely on "activity". "It is through our ability to produce more and export that we will be able to gradually generate the surpluses that will make it possible to repay the debt," he says.
The end of free education?
What he said. A phrase that set the campaign on fire. On January 13, during the closing by videoconference of the Congress of the Conference of University Presidents, Emmanuel Macron had estimated that France could "not remain permanently in a system where higher education has no price for almost -all of the students, where a third of the students are considered to be scholarship holders and yet where we have so much student insecurity, and a difficulty in financing a model much more financed by public money than anywhere in the world". "If we don't solve these structural problems, we will be lying to ourselves", he added before mentioning the "need for a systemic transformation of our universities."
Reactions. Despite the vagueness of the proposal, the observation and the words of Emmanuel Macron had been strangled by the various presidential candidates. "Talking about the increase in tuition fees for families who today are in real trouble with purchasing power, even though there is such a strong withdrawal from the State for the university, for me it's is provocation", had criticized the LR candidate and former Minister of Higher Education, Valérie Pécresse. The EELV candidate Yannick Jadot had deemed Emmanuel Macron's proposal "shocking", even going so far as to accuse him of being "the most anti-young president of the Fifth Republic".
His fix. Faced with the outcry, the Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, tried to extinguish the controversy in the National Assembly on January 18, explaining that Emmanuel Macron had "not spoken for a second about increasing the rights of registration". Asked Monday in the Creuse by a high school student, Emmanuel Macron returned to the subject: "When we want to fight against student precariousness, we do not increase the registration fees at the university, it is moreover for that, contrary to what I read everywhere in the press, I never said that. Thank you for having corrected it, I never said that ".
He also clarified what he intended to do: "What I was talking about is rather lifelong professional training, which universities will have to put in place and which, for their part, are intended to be paid. And which will allow universities to have income and to operate by giving themselves more means." The university in France is not free but the registration fees are very low: 170 euros for a bachelor's degree, 243 euros for a master's degree. Scholarship students are exempt from paying these fees.
A reduction in inheritance tax?
This is one of the campaign themes that has emerged in recent weeks. Should inheritance tax be lowered? Emmanuel Macron raised this subject in his interview with Le Parisien on January 5: "I think there is a subject on what I would call 'popular transmission', that is to say when one is not not on exorbitant amounts. (...) We are a nation of peasants in our collective psychology which is a strength. We have that in our DNA and therefore the transmission is important for us. So I think that there is things to improve. We must rather accompany people to help them pass on modest heritages", explained Emmanuel Macron.
Valérie Pécresse has also made it a focus of her campaign since she proposes, if she is elected, to exempt inheritance taxes up to 200,000 euros per child, against 100,000 euros today. Valérie Pécresse also wants to increase the ceiling for donations during the lifetime of tax-exempt donors. Each parent could thus give 100,000 euros every six years and no longer every fifteen years. The allowance would also be increased to 100,000 euros for an indirect transmission, for example in the case where "a person inherits from his uncle or his sister". By these measures, Valérie Pécresse ensures that she "removes [ra] inheritance tax for 95% of French people."
Although he is not accountable for Emmanuel Macron's future program, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, assured the Assembly on Tuesday that he had "no difficulty in considering a reduction of these [inheritance] rights, in particular concerning indirect line inheritance for which taxation, it is true, is penalizing." An idea soon taken up by the Head of State?
Macron wants to double the number of law enforcement personnel on the ground by 2030
During a trip to Nice on January 10, Emmanuel Macron clarified what he intended to do in the next years regarding safety. He thus wishes to double the number of police forces on the ground by 2030. To achieve this, the president is counting on the elimination of additional tasks as well as on reorganizations.
Emmanuel Macron also plans the presentation in March to the Council of Ministers of a law on the orientation and programming of the Ministry of the Interior (Lopmi). But this bill can only be voted on in the Assembly after the presidential election. This text should in particular make it possible to release “3,500 police officers and gendarmes” to put them on the public highway.
This Lopmi is the cornerstone of the president's security project. It would add an additional 15 billion euros to the security budget over five years, an increase of 25% compared to the current budget and would make it possible to double in five years the number of investigators dedicated to domestic violence, to double the police presence dedicated in public transport at times when attacks are most observed, or to increase the number of social workers in police stations and gendarmeries to reach a total of 600.
