Le Pen promised to reduce France’s budget deficit to 3.7% of GDP

As The Bell reports, citing Bloomberg, the €140 billion package is planned for five years. Le Pen intends to obtain most of the money by cutting spending, including contributions to the EU budget and expenses related to immigration.

She also wants to put a “golden rule” to a referendum, under which the deficit must be reduced by 0.5 percentage points of GDP per year, and public debt must be limited to 60% of GDP. At the same time, the program still includes lower fuel taxes and retirement at 60 for some workers.

At the same time, Le Pen called on the European Central Bank to intervene and “ease the burden of interest rates” for eurozone countries. According to her, this would free up tens of billions of euros for defense and technology, but Bloomberg пишет that the idea will face resistance: the ECB is prohibited from financing governments, and it has strict criteria for intervening in the debt market.

France’s finance minister, Roland Lescure, said the country is far from needing ECB assistance. The leader of the left-wing France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, called the plan one that would “paralyze the economy and worsen the deficit and debt”.

Le Pen is trying to reassure investors who are selling off French bonds. Last week, the yield spread between French and German 10-year bonds exceeded 1.5 percentage points for the first time since the eurozone debt crisis, and on Tuesday it narrowed to 1.33 percentage points.

Sources

• Material: thebell.io