Can France’s Rightists Embrace the Supply-Side?

It’s a healthy sign for the economic prospects in France, and Europe as a whole, to see that the Gallic rightist party, the National Rally, is getting more market-friendly. Feature the call by party leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, to “liberate” France’s economy by reducing red tape and bureaucracy. Regulations, they caution, “represent a staggering cost for economic actors” and “decrease the purchasing power of French citizens.” Madame Le Pen, too, is garnering attention for a recent series of meetings with corporate titans. They include the head of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, France’s richest citoyen. That reflects, in part, her party’s surge in polls ahead of next year’s presidential race. The rightists’ endorsement of free markets as a vehicle for prosperity is also heartening in a country that has dismissed such sentiments as a reflection of “Anglo-Saxon values” alien to La Belle France. The warmer approach to French business and free markets suggests, too, that the National Rally could be evolving toward the kinds of economic policies, including supply-side measures, that France needs to prosper. In the past, the hard-right platform of Madame Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had failed to grasp that, as the Sun has reported, French “unemployment stems not from too many immigrants but from too much socialism.”Now that the European Union shows signs of coming around on maintaining sturdy borders and even repatriating some of the continent’s millions of illegal migrants, the time could be ripe for Madame Le Pen’s movement to embrace the need for economic revival. It’s not a moment too soon, too, with France facing what these columns have reported as anemic growth, exorbitant taxes, and budget deficits that threaten the nation’s national security.The National Rally meetings with corporate leaders are “another indication,” Politico reports, that the National Rally is becoming “a mainstream movement that is no longer ostracized by the business community.” Monsieur Arnault had in the past refused to parley with the National Rally. A meeting between Mr. Bardella of the National Rally and a top French union, the Movement of the Enterprises of France, is another sign of the right’s resurgence.The meeting, Françoise Fressoz reports in the left-leaning Le Monde, means that “a wall has fallen” between the right and the business establishment. “In the name of defending their economic interests,” she adds, “some business leaders are now willing to associate with a party that makes national preference its cornerstone policy.” What’s not to like, though, about fortifying France’s economy vis-à-vis its rivals on the continent and around the globe?While they’re at it, Madame Le Pen and Mr. Bardella would be wise to set a course toward restoring the sovereignty France ceded to the EU — including the error of abandoning the Franc for the Euro. National Rally’s efforts, per Politico, are of a piece with “a trend across Europe’s conservative circles looking to streamline rules and regulations in a bid to jumpstart the EU’s economy.” These initiatives can only redound to France’s, and Europe’s, benefit.

Can France’s Rightists Embrace the Supply-Side?

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