François Hollande reacts to the government’s “inflation allowance”: “It’s a good mechanism for a few months” – LCI

Less than six months before the presidential election, François Hollande is back on television sets. Not as a candidate, but more prosaically as the author of a book called “Confront”. Invited this Thursday evening by Ruth Elkrief on LCI, his arrival coincided with a government announcement awaited for several days on the highly sensitive issue of energy price increases.

In the end, neither lower taxes nor fuel check, but compensation of 100 euros for 38 million French people, announced Jean Castex in the TF1 news. The opportunity for the former socialist president to give his opinion: “It has the merit of efficiency, simplicity and clarity”, he immediately reacted. “We cannot claim to solve this structural problem with a reduction in taxes. I find that a bonus, a check for 100 euros, is a good mechanism for a few months”, he also underlined, while expressing a reservation on the name of this device “inflation compensation”: “This is not to make the French understand what is at stake”, he commented.

As he does in his book, François Hollande then reviewed some putative or declared presidential candidates, and notably joked about his former Minister of the Economy, Emmanuel Macron. “Under the conditions in which he was elected, the French had to be brought together, he did not do it”, he notably launched, adding: “He surrounded himself with people in his image who were not parliamentarians. Even around him they were people who had no experience of France. That explains the errors of the yellow vests and the reform retirements”. Finally, to the Macron-Sarkozy question, is it the same? François Hollande answers: “I think on some points that is largely true.”

As for the far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour, François Hollande warns the French. “What he says about women, people of foreign origin, homosexual people… He is the candidate for the split. France split with Europe since it wants to get out, split between the French according to their gender and skin color “, he warns. “It is the theses he develops that must be challenged, not just the character. It would be too simple”, he continues.

While the presidential campaign is likely to be bitter, François Hollande wants to be optimistic despite everything, “the right and the left will be recomposed”, he predicts, adding “look at what Edouard Philippe is doing”. “I will always be available to reconstitute a political force which gives hope to the French”, he adds, wishing that “this election is useful for the French”.