French Election: Business leaders’ silence on Le Pen is deafening

Shy CEOs, like shy voters, may simply see Le Pen as the least dangerous option on offer.

Emmanuel Macron’s state of mind has drawn stinging rebukes from his party and his allies after he called snap parliamentary elections that his far-right nemesis Marine Le Pen is expected to win. But there’s a method to his madness. If the French are fed up enough to want radical change at the risk of worse public finances and a standoff with the European Union, better to do it now than in 2027 when the Elysee is up for grabs.

What’s less understandable as Le Pen’s party strides ever closer to power is the position of the French elite. A strange silence has descended upon the chief executive class, caught like a deer in headlights as years of pro-business reforms and tax predictability threaten to turn into a Brexit-style atmosphere of “f*ck business.” Promises of unrealistic giveaways and a lowering of the retirement age from both the far right and the far left — which will do little to boost productivity or competitiveness and promise to worsen the spiraling budget deficit — would normally be causing a bigger outcry.

Obviously, most CEOs don’t like the idea of indirectly taking a stand against their own customers – especially when it comes to sensitive topics like immigration or windfall taxes.

But considering the looming threat to public finances, the lack of any examination of deep-seated issues like innovation or growth, and the search for scapegoats on both left and right, maybe optics should matter less. It is after all curious that so few bosses who routinely defend stakeholder capitalism and who tout their environmental and social credentials have been willing to publicly talk about the policies on offer in this election. The employer lobby group Medef’s head Patrick Martin told Le Figaro this week his association viewed both Le Pen and the left bloc's proposals as dangerous for the French economy, but that it didn't want to insult their voters by casting them as extremists.

Among those willing to stick their heads above the parapet are Maurice Levy, former boss of Publicis Groupe SA, who this week warned that both “extremes” were dabbling in unrealistic economics and heading for a brutal awakening. Euronext NV boss Stephane Boujnah recently cautioned voters tempted by Le Pen that Europe’s ability to compete with the US and China would stall.

Everyone else? Crickets.

Perhaps shy CEOs, like shy voters, may simply see Le Pen as the least dangerous option on offer. Her Rassemblement National party has been doggedly wooing blue-chip CAC 40 bosses in recent years, offering the siren song of “simplification” instead of the more toxic policy of “Frexit” that it promoted back in 2017. It’s increasingly common to hear people say that Marine isn’t her father Jean-Marie, that her No. 2 Jordan Bardella isn’t a destroyer of worlds but a bringer of continuity — especially if he fails to gather an absolute majority. At this week’s Eurosatory defense-industry junket, I watched Bardella, 28, stride confidently past dozens of exhibition stands of lethal ordinance, giving the attitude of a leader-in-waiting. His declaration of support on the sidelines for Ukraine and his support for French commitments in NATO, despite his party’s recent negative stances on both, show an absolute willingness to dump policies to reassure public opinion.

Cynically, this is very close to Adolphe Thiers’ view of Napoleon III as a “cretin we shall lead.” The dream of molding Le Pen and Bardella into a French version of Giorgia Meloni’s Italian right-wing coalition — essentially combining hard-right culture wars with a constructive stance on budget matters and an Atlanticist foreign policy — is percolating. It explains why one of the first examples of a big business move was billionaire Vincent Bollore’s reported push to “unite the right” by encouraging an alliance between the center-right Republicains and Le Pen.

Yet Le Pen isn’t Meloni. Her party is institutionally inexperienced, her policy U-turns plentiful and her populist appeal lacking the spirit of compromise seen in the ruling coalition in Italy. It’s one thing to assume the French deep state can run things while chaos unfolds in parliament — but another to assume the state won’t itself get entangled along the way, as in the UK. With 10 days to go before voting, it’s time for French business to demand clarity on the current batch of expensive promises made by both right and left. Otherwise there’s a risk that France inherits Italy’s economic path rather than its leadership.

Credit: Bloomberg