In less than two weeks, French voters will start voting for their next president, with most polls indicating that the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, will secure a second term.
Central to Macron’s platform is the prosperity he says he has built for France over five years: high growth rates, falling unemployment and soaring business confidence. In 2017, Macron pledged to forge a “new growth model” that would liberalise the French economy.
However, critics argue that he has failed to deal with France’s substantial public debt and has damaged wage growth and living standards.
Notwithstanding the pandemic’s devastating effect on European economies, the data tells a more nuanced picture. While Macron has ameliorated many of the impediments to investment that the French economy has long struggled with,
