Guardian Europe columnists Rokhaya Diallo and Alexander Hurst are taking questions from readers about the riots and protests in France. Join the discussion in the comments here.Michael1611 asks: As Jon Henley suggests in his recent column, public attitudes to Macron have toxified the entire centrist bloc. But if (as seems very likely) Marine Le Pen’s RN party wins the election what on earth can they do that is viable in economic terms, given the financial crisis the country faces? It seems to me there is a risk of a huge backlash when the promises they are making cannot be kept?Alexander: I’m going to repurpose a trite phrase and say that nobody’s political programme is going to survive first contact with France’s coming debt crisis. The French thinktank Terra Nova did a breakdown of the RN’s error-riddled economic plan, which seemed to have been co-created with or at least edited with AI. Interest rates on French debt are already unsustainably high, and the RN has already voted against raising taxes on the wealthy and the ECB isn’t going to run to bailout a far right government promising to go to battle with EU’s institutions, so it will be left with budget cuts and betraying everyone who thinks Le Pen will actually lower the retirement age.Unfortunately, the same probably goes for Mélenchon (even though I think the chances of him defeating Le Pen are extremely small, given the persistent polling on that matchup), who will probably face a similar situation of spiking interest rates and EU partners who will want things in return … and he’s already made ‘disobeying’ a central point of his future relationship with the EU. So, why would they offer a condition-free bailout to a country with a lower retirement age than their own citizens enjoy (even in the Nordics where many benefits, like year-long paternity leave, are more generous than they are in France), and that’s made antagonism and confrontation its starting point?Rokhaya: The RN is likely to use this to argue that France is financing Europe while neglecting its own population. Other parties will need to explain what European spending delivers and how it should be funded, which is legitimate. The proposed €2tn budget is still being negotiated, so I would be cautious about presenting the €38bn annual French contribution as a settled commitment.To me public finances involve political choices, including choices about raising revenue. France’s debt cannot become a permanent justification for leaving schools understaffed and buildings deteriorating. As I wrote in my Guardian column last week, the economists Élise Huillery and Romane Paris, for example, propose an inheritance tax reform that could generate €11.8bn in additional education spending. It would target only the largest inheritances, the wealthiest 1% of heirs. So there are alternatives to asking that public services are cut back and ordinary households to absorb further austerity.Alexander: Financing the EU based on national contributions is an error that should be corrected. It immediately gives the right an argument that “we” are “sending” money to the EU. It would make so much more sense to replace contributions with an EU-level corporate tax floor to give the EU its own resources, and at the same time prevent race-to-the-bottom style tax policies that fuel tax evasion schemes. I’ve never understood the opposition to this (other than corporate capture, I guess) by states that maintain low corporate tax rates; they would be fully free to go above the tax floor or keep their tax rates as close to it as they wished. And it wouldn’t harm any single state’s competitiveness, since the common corporate tax rate would apply across the board.As far as France’s domestic spending goes, interest payments on the debt will soon become the government’s single largest expenditure, soon exceeding total spending on education. Allowing that to happen isn’t coherent with a vision of social and comic justice. Interest payment on the debt - ie. money paid out to creditors – is going to be €73bn next year, and rising quickly. That is money that cannot be spent on education, healthcare, rural areas, green transition … Raising taxes on the wealthy and on inheritances and cracking down on corporate subsidies and tax evasion is a necessary step, but in the long term, there are other models that France might learn from as well, like sovereign wealth funds that generate returns for the public, instead of leaving the market’s returns to be captured primarily by the wealthy. Continue reading...