Milton Friedman had made one of the most insightful observations on politics: «Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change». And when the crisis comes, he said, decisions depend on the ideas already available.
France seems determined to test this theory in practice.
A new report prepared under a government mandate warns that, without a substantial change in course, the French fiscal deficit can reach 7% of GDP by 2030 and public debt can exceed 130%. Annual interest payments may then reach EUR 124 billion.
France is not a small economy that Europe can watch from a distance. With a debt of more than EUR 3.5 trillion, its budgetary path concerns the entire Eurozone. The older the patient is, the more dangerous the delusion that someone else will pay for the treatment becomes.
These figures do not describe a sudden disaster. There was no earthquake, war or pandemic that explains France's budgetary progress in itself. They describe something much more common and, politically, much more dangerous: decades of promises that exceed the potential of the economy that is called upon to pay them.
Here lies one of the biggest frauds in modern European policy. We learned to recognize populism only when it shouts, insults institutions or promises to drive foreigners away. But we find it difficult to see him when he wears a tie, speaks moderately and approves another budget that transfers the bill to the next.
Yet, there is also populism of the center. It is the policy that knows that an insurance system does not come out but postpones reform. Who knows that public spending increases faster than revenue but baptizes every cut «austerity». Borrowing to protect today's political costs and leaving the next economic crisis.
The problem is that markets do not vote and numbers do not participate in television panels. You can ignore them for a while. But you cannot forever avoid the consequences of this refusal.
When the crisis comes, the choices narrow. The reforms that today can be done gradually and with social sensitivity, tomorrow can be forced. The cuts that can be targeted today, tomorrow become horizontal. And the citizens who for years heard that «Everything's under control.» They reasonably feel deceived.
Then the limbs appear and offer the ideas already available. Protecting, nationalizing, hunting rich, hunting immigrants, leaving European commitments, a strong leader who promises to solve with political will what arithmetic refuses to solve.
The rise of populism is not always explained by TikTok, Russian propaganda or the alleged nonsense of voters. It often starts with the irresponsibility of those who present themselves as the only ones responsible.
Greece is well aware of this story. For years we've been buying social peace on loan. When reality sent the account, the political system looked guilty everywhere except for the decisions it had made. And through the crisis, the politically inconceivable became politically unavoidable, just as Friedman warned.
The lesson of France is not that we must wait with satisfaction for the collapse of the French social model. It is that budgetary seriousness is a condition of political moderation.
Anyone who postpones difficult decisions does not avoid judgment. She just makes sure that when she comes, they are the most extreme ideas that will already be on the table.
