Wake-up call regarding his financial situation France Jean-Claude Trichet, ex-president of the European Central Bank, intervenes.

In an interview with the French magazine Le Point, Trichet underlined the steady deterioration of French public finances over the past 15 years, recalling that in 2007 France and Germany had the same public debt, amounting to 64% of their GDP, while today it is equivalent to 112% of its GDP. , and Germany – about 66%. “The problem isn’t Fitch, it’s not Covid, it’s not the energy crisis, it’s France’s long-term financial weakness,” says Trichet, emphasizing that France is currently doing poorly in the eurozone, is over-indebted, and he doesn’t understand. This.

“Ten years ago we took loans on the same terms as Germany. Today we are between Germany and Spain on interest rates,” emphasizes Trichet. stressing that unlike Italy, Greece, Ireland, Portugal or Spain, which suffered from the crisis of the previous decade and recovered, France does not seem to understand what it means to be vulnerable.

Continuing, Trichet states the following: “I have always supported financial prudence, because this is an important element of the credibility of the country in Europe and in the world. Faced with a global crisis like Covid, it goes without saying that fiscal action had to be taken to avoid a crash and a giant social crisis. Additional expenses were needed. But the slogan “by all means” was probably wrong in the case of France, given its rampant propensity to increase spending.

Regarding pension reform in France, Trichet states that there were no 36 solutions to secure pension funding and that raising the retirement age was the right solution. He also adds: “I don’t make political comments, but what I don’t say is that the government remained firm despite facing a lot of public opinion, from the extreme right to the extreme left. The government has shown courage. It would be tragic for our credibility as a nation to surrender. Neither our partners nor the global lenders who finance us would understand the failure.”

When asked finally about the increase in defense spending due to the war in Ukraine, among other things, he points out that “we must constantly question their effectiveness, because they burden the country’s overall spending compared to its competitors. Moreover, the necessary increase in military spending should not justify a less prudent financial position. European countries must make compromises and refine their priorities in order to free up resources for their defense.”

Source: RES-IPE