Macron pledges billions to fight poverty – but his tax cuts save the rich even more, say critics

EMMANUEL MACRON, the French president, yesterday unveiled an €8billion (£7billion) plan to lift millions out of poverty – and to counteract his image as the “president of the rich”.

“I don’t want a plan to help poor people to better live poor. I want them to be given the choice, and the possibility, not to be poor any more,” Mr Macron said in a speech at the Museum of Mankind in Paris.

France spends more on social benefits than any country in Europe, but 14 per cent of the population – nine million people – still live below the poverty line, one third of them children.

“Our welfare model, even if it corrects a little, even if it allows some to live better, does not do enough to prevent people falling into poverty, does not do enough to eradicate poverty,” Mr Macron said. His new plan focuses on better education for poor children and providing help to unemployed people to get back to work.

Measures include crèche places where jobseekers or workers can leave their children, free school breakfasts for the poorest children, subsidised school lunches priced at €1 and compulsory job training for school leavers under 18. Completely free healthcare will be extended, as will various backto-work schemes.

Mr Macron came under fire in June for complaining that the French state spends “crazy amounts of dough” on welfare without lifting many people out of poverty. His poll ratings have tumbled since he came to power in

May last year.

Critics were swift to point out the gap between the €8 billion promised for the anti-poverty plan and the €20billion the rich will save from the scrapping of the wealth tax.