Einstein and Montchalin

Amélie de Montchalin would be well advised to reread Albert Einstein. For the famous physicist, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." One couldn't help but think of this famous maxim as we listened to the Minister of Public Accounts recite her ultra-liberal breviary on Sunday, April 27. On the very progressive airwaves of Europe 1 and CNews, this zealous Macronist, in search of savings, proposed including in the 2026 budget the elimination or merger of a third of the 450 state agencies and operators. CNRS, Météo France, French Office for Biodiversity, Regional Health Agencies... In total, the bloodletting, from which she hopes to extract €2 to €3 billion, could directly or indirectly affect some 180,000 public sector jobs.

The craziest thing – as Einstein would say – is that this announcement is being made at the very moment when, on the other side of the Atlantic, a certain Elon Musk was acknowledging in the media the failure of this same policy of destroying the state administration… For three months, the Commission for Government Efficiency – the famous DOGE – led by the libertarian billionaire has thrown tens of thousands of civil servants out onto the streets, blindly cut essential funding to a multitude of public health and research organizations, and ultimately failed to produce the much-heralded budgetary savings. Completely contrite, the Tesla boss, with his well-known inconsistency, announced last week that he was finally going to refocus on his business, which has been in freefall since entering politics.

One might have hoped that this fiasco would instill a hint of doubt in Amélie de Montchalin's economic software. Not so. The Trumpian chaos doesn't shake the minister, who adopts its letter and spirit. Like her colleague in the Civil Service, Laurent Marcangeli, who considers that "our country is obese with its bureaucracy," the HEC and Axa insurance graduate lives trapped in a very Reagan-esque ideological presupposition: the less government and regulation there is, the more "efficiency" there is. A refrain that the right and far right have been repeating in chorus for years. However, the only "efficiency" ever demonstrated by this type of policy is the explosion of inequality, the weakening of public services, and the decline of civic cohesion. Contrary to Amélie de Montchalin's innuendo, these operators and agencies are essential to the local implementation of public policies. Reducing them in this way would weaken equality of treatment across the country, undermine the production of rigorous and independent scientific knowledge, and further distance every French person, especially those on the lowest incomes, from the decisions that concern them.

But in Amélie de Montchalin's alternative world, where social hierarchies are easily accommodated, these perspectives are not a problem at all. Nor is blaming budgetary overruns on civil servants who are not responsible for them. Do we need to remind ourselves once again? Over the past ten years, in the name of supply-side policy, the sixteen tax relief policies for businesses and the wealthy (CICE, Responsibility Pact, etc.) have thrown €460 billion out the window, with no return on investment! A chasm that accounts for 42% of the increase in French debt over this period. Hearing the government today give lessons in budgetary control while attacking a suffering public sector is indecent and a culpable inconsistency that we would be well advised to put an end to. You don't need to be Einstein to understand this.