France: Main political announcements post great national debate

After two months of discussions held , including 10,000 debates all over France and almost two million on-line contributions, Emmanuel Macron announced yesterday evening during a one-hour televised speech , followed by one-and-a-half-hour-long press conference , the main projects and reforms to be carried out this summer and the next coming year. Th e reforms announced were wide ranging design ing a broader reform programme to structure the remaining time of the presidency of Emmanuel Macron. The key reform pillars include , as expected , a) significant additional tax relief for households, b) the main proposals for the forthcoming constitutional reform, c) a territorial reform decentralizing additional s tate competences of public services at local level, d) a broad reform of the French high-level public administration . At the same time , the timetables of previous announced reforms of the unemployment insurance , of the pension system and of dependency care system were specified . Due to the willingness to fulfill EU commitment s regarding public finances, yesterday's announcements also include some funding counterparts, mainly a closure of corporates tax loopholes, cut s in public expenditure s and potential extension of the lifelong work ing time . While the implementation and the timetable of many of these reforms remain unknown at this stage , it is very likely that most of them will come into effect in 2020 , in order to insure the fulfillment of the EU commitments in 2019 . Indeed in 2019, French fiscal deficit is expected to be exceptionally this year below the -3% of GDP threshold (at-3.1% according to the government, thus way above -3.5%) due to a one-off measure . Ye sterday’s speech show ed that French reforms are still on-going .