For an hour, Valérie Pécresse answered our questions from her Parisian HQ on Monday.
“Since January, I have been the woman to be killed”, assures the Republican candidate, who accuses the head of state of wanting to “skip the election”.
She claims to be the only "true right" candidate and unveils her reform program.
“I was so happy to be able to shake hands again… And there, poof!
“For a few days, Valérie Pécresse had to adapt her campaign after being tested positive for Covid-19 last week.
In solitary confinement, the Republican presidential candidate answered our questions by videoconference on Monday afternoon, before resuming her campaign on the ground on Tuesday.
While stagnating around 10% in the polls, the boss of the Ile-de-France region defends her reform program and targets Emmanuel Macron, whom she accuses of wanting to "skip the election".
How do you judge this campaign?
She is unlike any other.
Normally, a President of the Republic comes to present his report.
There, it's “move on, there's nothing to see”.
We cannot talk about the increase in violence, immigration, purchasing power, energy sovereignty… In short, its balance sheet is hidden.
Emmanuel Macron refuses to debate.
He wants to evade the election and be elected by tacit agreement.
He also ordered his ministers to refuse any debate with me.
We can clearly see the scenario written by Macronie.
They do not want a republican right but a face-to-face with the extremes in the second round.
Because they know that if they are against Zemmour, Le Pen or Mélenchon, it is their assurance of victory.
Since January, I have been the woman to kill.
I concentrated all the criticisms, from the right, from the left, from the middle, from the extreme right, from everywhere.
But I believe in my project, so I continue to fight with tenfold energy to make this scenario written in advance lie.
Are you still opposed to a European embargo on Russian gas and oil?
Isn't this continuing to indirectly finance Vladimir Putin's war?
I am not opposed to this embargo.
But to decide it, you have to be able to hold out over time, because nothing would be worse than declaring an embargo and saying, a week later, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, we're not capable of supply”.
So I called for securing supplies first.
I am in favor of tougher sanctions, anything that can stop the war.
But the French must not pay too high a price.
You defend nuclear power and the creation of new power stations.
While the question of energy independence arises, are we not dependent on foreign uranium?
Our objective is to save the planet, with the zero carbon objective in 2050, it is a moral imperative.
However, France has been condemned in court for not having respected this trajectory.
Look: Emmanuel Macron closed Fessenheim, in return for which he reopened coal-fired power stations!
If we want to get there, we have to get out of oil, gas, coal.
We must therefore invest massively in nuclear energy.
Does it make us dependent on uranium?
Yes, so we also need to develop renewable energies: biomass, geothermal energy, biogas, biofuels… We also need to develop the production of hydrogen, which is the energy of the future.
You are proposing a net salary increase of 10% in five years for all those who earn less than 2,800 euros per month… Is this enough, when inflation is estimated in 2022 between 3.7 and 4.4%?
My proposal is inflation free.
As of this summer, I am increasing net salaries by 3% while reducing pension contributions by a third.
I finance it by reforming pensions.
I saw that the candidate Macron was also committing to it, but obviously much more timidly than me, since he said that it would not be the priority of his five-year term.
Moreover, when he says he is going to make a reform, we now know that he is not really sure of doing it.
Me, I will really do it, to save money and restore purchasing power to the French.
The reduction in pension contributions will allow someone who earns 1,400 euros to have 500 euros more over the year.
Work should pay more.
This represents only 1.50 euros per day…
I also propose the tax exemption of overtime, without ceiling.
I also want employees to be able to convert their RTT into salary, without charge and without limit, it's more purchasing power.
I also propose a birth bonus from the first child of 900 euros per year for all families and I increase the family allowance by 15% for the second and third child.
I also offer free tutoring and meals for 1 euro in canteens for disadvantaged families.
I know that Jean-Luc Mélenchon offers the free meal, but I don't have the money to finance the 250 billion deficit.
Everything I offer is funded.
According to the Pensions Orientation Council, the recovery has made it possible to redress the economic situation of pension schemes.
Why still defend retirement at 65?
Retirees have been the big forgotten of this quinquennium.
Pensions are no longer indexed to inflation, for lack of revenue.
So this reform is essential.
With me, no pensioner with a full career will have a pension lower than the minimum wage and widows or widowers without a full career will have a survivor's pension at 75%.
Finally, disabled children without inheritance will benefit throughout their life from the survivor's pension of their last parent.
You know, it's the right that made the successive pension reforms.
It has always been the right because it is the only political family that has the courage to go and make major reforms for the country.
It was not the coronavirus epidemic that prevented Emmanuel Macron from carrying out the pension reform, but a lack of courage?
I believe so, yes.
Is there not a risk of accentuating senior unemployment, which is already very high?
In reality, the labor market is adapting: the more the retirement age is increased, the more seniors there are working.
The important thing is to create jobs.
I will do it by lowering production taxes.
Isn't there a risk of accentuating youth unemployment, at the other end of the scale?
No, because they are not the same jobs.
New professions are arriving and new qualifications.
We now have hundreds of thousands of jobs to fill, sometimes with very good salaries.
And, within ten years, we will need a million jobs in the digital sector.
It will also be necessary to recruit massively in the professions of personal services and care, safety, the environment, industry... Rather than making Emmanuel Macron's 500-euro "contract of engagement", I propose the “young active income”: 670 euros for a maximum of six months to train young people in these new recruiting professions.
You want to save 84 billion, and in particular eliminate 150,000 positions in the public service.
Is it a policy of rigor that awaits the French?
No, this is the policy I made in my region: I removed all duplicates and structure fees.
I did better with less money.
My 150,000 deletions is one in three retirements not replaced.
When you eliminate waste, it is money that you recover, therefore more purchasing power.
There will be no more royalties, less social contributions, less taxes… The reform is a win-win.
It's not at all rigorous, it's giving the money back to the French.
With fewer civil servants, do you assume to give more power to the private sector?
I have no taboo about making public-private partnerships to make it work better.
I have already done this in the Ile-de-France region by launching a training platform for job seekers with two private players.
Why would the government refrain from working with young, innovative startupers who do better than ministries?
Isn't there a drift in the missions entrusted to the private sector, when we see that the government spent 900 million euros on consulting firms in 2021?
It has nothing to do.
What I don't understand is why, in order to reform the administration, we have to go and ask private companies to advise the administration?
My project is to spend better and less.
You can imagine that it is not to spend millions of euros asking advice from private companies.
You propose differentiated sentences to fight against "the crossroads of delinquency".
Does that mean that if I steal a television in Creuse, I risk less than if I steal one in Ile-de-France?
I propose an aggravating circumstance in what are called lawless zones, the 62 districts of Republican reconquest, where all the traffic is concentrated.
It already exists.
If today you harass a woman in public transport, you have more serious penalties than if you harass her in the street.
My measure does not therefore contravene the equality between citizens, on the contrary, it makes it possible to restore republican equality in these districts.
I want zero impunity, so there will also be minimum sentences for repeat offenders and minimum sentences, including one year in prison for all those who attack people in authority.
On immigration, you propose the establishment of quotas by profession and by country, voted each year by Parliament.
Isn't it complicated to define the needs in each professional sector?
In reality, the professional branches are already taking stock of their needs.
But we need a tool to control the flows.
The law must allow you to choose who you welcome.
Because zero immigration is a slogan.
Not everyone who uses it will.
The only one who tried was Boris Johnson and he ended up with his whole economy flat.
But the illegal immigrants must return home, and the countries which refuse to take them back will not be entitled to any visa.
Because if we have uncontrolled immigration for too many years – which has been the case for five years – we are unable to welcome people well.
What I want is that we welcome less to really integrate and assimilate those who want to become French.
So Eric Zemmour's “zero immigration” project is not credible?
It's not believable and it's unfair.
These are podium slogans.
Eric Zemmour would be powerless to implement it and ineffective.
If we want illegal immigrants to return to their country of origin, we need a “win-win” situation: that they take back their illegal immigrants in exchange for obtaining visas.
You said that Emmanuel Macron made a "bad plagiarism" of your program.
Why ?
When I say bad plagiarism, it's because there's nothing right about his record.
Honestly… 32% increase in violence, 272,000 residence permits issued this year and 12% deportations to the border, 85 billion trade balance deficit, a debt which has increased by 1,000 billion, an extremely weakened school, 5 million French without a doctor, nuclear power abandoned for five years… He tries to take up the ideas of the right because he understood that they were the right ones.
But we stay in the “at the same time”…
Emmanuel Macron is therefore not on the right?
He is not from the right.
There is no right on order, there is no right on tax cuts, there is no right on the valuation of work.
How do you expect the French to believe that he is going to do the opposite of what he did for five years?
It's not believable.
We must, in the first round, vote for a project that does not bequeath to future generations an ecological debt and not an abysmal financial debt.
Because debt cannot fly to the sky.
That's why I say I'm the real right.
Emmanuel Macron did not send France's financial trajectory to Brussels.
It's not normal.
It means that the bill will be paid afterwards.
With him, the truth will be after the elections.
I ask for the truth now.
If Nicolas Sarkozy does not support you by the first round, would you consider that a betrayal?
I was very proud to be his minister, he taught me a lot.
He is no longer in politics.
Me, I follow my path.
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The Republicans (LR)
Countryside
Emmanuel Macron
Interview
Presidential election 2022
Valerie Pécresse
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