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France’s Marine Le Pen Unveils Presidential Platform Measures

France’s Marine Le Pen Unveils Presidential Platform Measures

France’s Marine Le Pen Unveils Presidential Platform Measures
Marine Le Pen. (Photographer: Jeff Pacoud/AFP/via Getty Images)

(Bloomberg) -- French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s team unveiled Saturday the main themes of her program in a document titled the “144 presidential commitments. Marine 2017.” Following are the main measures detailed in the document.

Banking and monetary system

  • Scrap the 1973 law that secures independence of the Bank of France
  • Restore a national currency to face “unfair competition”
  • Allow the Bank of France to directly fund the Treasury
  • Restore “monetary, legislative, territorial and economic sovereignty”
  • Cut interest rates on loans and banking overdrafts for companies and households
  • Scrap EU regulation that freezes or bans the withdrawal of deposits (life insurance and savings) in case of a financial crisis or bank run

Europe

  • Organize a referendum on France’s European Union membership
  • Pull out of the Schengen accord that guarantees freedom of movement
  • Recreate a 6,000-strong border-control police unit
  • Ban posted workers from EU countries to work in France
  • Replace EU’s agricultural pact with a French agricultural deal
France’s Marine Le Pen Unveils Presidential Platform Measures

Marine Le Pen on Feb. 4.

Photographer: Jeff Pacoud/AFP/via Getty Images

Trade

  • Promote “smart protectionism”
  • Ban foreign companies with optimization tax-scheme from having access to public markets
  • Support French companies in face of “unfair international competition”
  • Ban imports of all type of goods that don’t respect French norms
  • Create a “patriotic economy” by rescinding EU laws that ban national preference for public orders
  • Ban foreign investors from strategic and “important” French industries
  • Create a sovereign fund to protect French companies from “vulture” funds and takeovers
  • “Refuse trade agreements” such as CETA,TAFTA, accords with Australia and New Zealand

Industry

  • Cut regulated natural gas and electricity prices by 5 percent “immediately”
  • Maintain state control on EDF, start a major multibillion euros re-fit plan of the country’s nuclear plants, keep Fessenheim nuclear plant open
  • Ban shale-gas exploration “until environment, security and health conditions are satisfactory"
  • Set a moratorium on windmills for power generation
  • Ban genetically modified organisms
  • Plan to re-industrialize the country with state backing
  • Keep innovation in France by banning a company that received state subsidies or tax cuts from being acquired by a foreign investor
  • Support small and mid size companies by alleviating administrative rules, taxes and labor regulations

Taxes

  • Create an additional tax on foreign workers “to promote priority to French nationals”
  • Maintain the ISF wealth tax
  • Lower income taxes for the three lowest income brackets
  • Create a tax on companies doing business in France but evading the tax system on profits

Immigration, Foreigners, National Identity

  • Cut legal immigration to 10,000 a year
  • Ban “automatic naturalization” for spouses
  • Automatic deportation of any foreign criminal offender
  • Scratch the right of birthplace
  • Make citizenship a “privilege” and insure a “national priority” for French citizens in the constitution
  • Put French flags on all public buildings
  • “Defend the French language” by restricting the use of foreign languages in schools and by reserving half the teaching time in primary schools to French language
  • Make uniforms mandatory in schools

Security

  • Pull out of NATO military command
  • Increase defense spending to 3 percent of GDP by 2022
  • Hire 15,000 police and security forces
  • Build a new aircraft carrier (to be named Richelieu)
  • Plan to disarm “5,000 gang leaders” in French suburbs
  • Rebuild a local intelligence service
  • Scratch state family subsidies if underage child is found guilty of repeated offenses
  • Creation of a sentence of life without parole
  • Creation of 40,000 new prison cells

Terrorism

  • Ban all radical Islam groups
  • Close all extremists mosques

Labor Laws and Retirement

  • National plan for equal pay for women
  • Lower retirement age to 60 with 40 years of contributions for a full pension
  • Scrap the latest labor regulation (Loi El Khomri)
  • Maintain 35-hour workweek
  • Increase public workers’ wages

Liberties

  • National data protection plan: personal data storage and servers must be in France
  • Ban surrogacy and restrict medically supported procreation to people with sterility problems
  • Scrap the 2014 law allowing same-sex marriage and replace it with civil union (without retroactivity)
  • Put the state on the supervisory board of the television and radio regulator

Electoral System

  • Change the voting system to proportional for every election (legislative, senatorial, presidential)
  • Cut the number of lawmakers at the National Assembly to 300 from 577 and Senate to 200 from 348
  • Cut local administration and shrink the levels of local types of governments by half
  • Make citizen-initiated referendums easier to organize

To contact the reporter on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann, Andras Gergely