In an interview on TF1 and France 2, Thursday September 24, Emmanuel Macron pointed to the geopolitical situation as being at the origin of the increase in prices at the pump. The French president announced the sending of military assets to Saudi Arabia to protect oil exports.
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France will send military resources, including soldiers and radars, to help protect the Yanbu hydrocarbon export site, he said.
This announcement comes against a backdrop of attacks carried out in recent weeks by Yemen’s Houthis against Saudi Arabia. The Shiite armed movement, aligned with Iran, has strengthened its control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, overlooking the Red Sea, a crucial route for global energy exports, like the Strait of Hormuz.
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• Oil diplomacy
The French president wanted to reassure about the oil supply. He says he has carried out “intense diplomatic activity”, meeting in recent weeks the leaders of Saudi, Iraqi and Nigerian – hydrocarbon supplier countries – in order to ensure that he has the same volumes for France.
“We will continue diplomacy with the Iranians and the Omanis,” also assured Emmanuel Macron.
“We have replenished gas stocks and also oil stocks” for the months to come, he promised the French.
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A ban on American diesel exports would be a “bad” decision, also added the French president, who assured that he had discussed it with Donald Trump.
“This decision would be bad, not just for the rest of the world. For the American economy too,” said the French president, adding: “I think that all the experts he has around him and all the American refiners can only tell him the same thing.”
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The head of state said he was considering proposing to the American president to “release strategic stocks to bring down the markets”.
• A reduction in taxes if prices were to soar
Emmanuel Macron affirmed that he does not rule out lowering fuel taxes if the surge in prices continues, while affirming that it would be preferable to lower prices using diplomatic means.
“I think that based on developments, nothing should be excluded,” said the president, while judging that a reduction in taxes is “not the most virtuous decision” because they “are used to finance state spending”. “Our interest is rather to lower prices before lowering taxes,” he added.
• Russian threat in France
Emmanuel Macron also denied during this interview the existence of a CIA alert on a possible Russian drone attack targeting the south of France.
He nevertheless estimated that France could be targeted by an attempted attack using a drone loaded with explosives like at Leipzig airport in early August, which Germany had attributed to Russia.
France has not yet experienced attacks of this type “but when you ask me the question ‘could it happen?’ my answer is yes,'” the French president said, adding that Russia considers that “Europe is the strategic depth of Ukraine.”
“We must be lucid about the evolving threat, then we must prepare,” underlined the French leader, who returned to the measures announced on Friday, such as the protection of all sensitive sites in France “region by region” and the mobilization of prefects on the subject.
• New Russian mobilization of 300,000 men
A new Russian mobilization of 300,000 men for the war against Ukraine “is a scenario that seems credible to us”, declared Emmanuel Macron.
“The signal that Russia is sending today is: we are ready to make even more sacrifices to take all of Donbass,” added the French president, specifying that since the invasion of Ukraine, this war has already cost Russia “1.2 million men”, wounded or killed.
• Debt: Macron assumes his choices
Concerning the economic situation in France, Emmanuel Macron affirmed that he did not regret “at all the ‘whatever it costs'”, that is to say the public aid put in place during the Covid pandemic which increased the country’s debt, today reducing its budgetary room for maneuver.
He affirmed that the spending of the “last ten years” was broken down into “a third to protect the French from crises”, “a third to prepare France for the future”, and “a third because we have not reformed the social model enough”. “I don’t regret anything about the first two thirds. I regret not having been efficient and quick enough in the last,” he said.
The president, on the other hand, said he regretted not having been able to reform the French social model: “I regret that the social reforms (retirement) that I initiated were blocked (…) I did not succeed in convincing the political forces, I am not abdicating my responsibilities.”
• No new dissolution in sight
A new dissolution “would not be good for the country”, also said Emmanuel Macron, thus ruling out a hypothesis which has been circulating in recent days.
The Head of State called on “the political forces” to have a “spirit of responsibility” before examining the budgetary texts.
“I think it would be bad today to do a dissolution because today, we are eight months away from a presidential election. And so, if we did a dissolution today, we would add to the war, the problems of purchasing power and a budget to pass, political instability. We would block the next president, the next president, from the possibility of doing this dissolution and rebuilding a majority. So it is not desirable”, replied the head of state, questioned on TF1 and France 2.
With AFP
