- Title: Macron proposes reforms to protect society's weakest
- Date: 2nd March 2017
- Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (MARCH 2, 2017) (REUTERS) PEOPLE STANDING BESIDE STAGE, AS MACRON SPEAKS
- Embargoed: 16th March 2017 15:07
- Keywords: Macron programme manifesto campaign parliament France presidential election
- Location: PARIS, FRANCE
- City: PARIS, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Topics: Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
- Reuters ID: LVA006669PAVB
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Presidential challenger Emmanuel Macron on Thursday (March 2) said he would root out inequalities in France's pension system, sell government stakes in major firms and downsize parliament as he sought to silence critics who say his bid is thin on substance.
Macron, a former investment banker running as an independent centrist, is favourite to win the unpredictable race in a May runoff against far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Macron owes some of his status as frontrunner to a financial scandal plaguing his other main rival, conservative Francois Fillon.
"The society I want will be both free of constraints and blockages and also protective of the weakest," Macron said as he unveiled his campaign manifesto.
He took aim at Fillon's declared admiration for the union-bashing British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and at his plans to cut half a million public sector jobs, saying that "the future of France is not a set of British reforms from the eighties."
Nevertheless, several of Macron's own reforms will be controversial in a country of powerful interest groups, and which faces a feeble economic recovery and high unemployment which critics say he failed to tackle as economy minister.
While France's government has traditionally held large stakes in companies of national stature, Macron said he would sell up to 10 billion euros (8.57 billion pounds) worth of shares in groups in which the state does not hold a majority.
Candidates on the left are opposed to such moves.
The money raised will be put in a "Fund for Industry and Innovation" to finance future projects, which may include dividends from the companies he declined to name rather than outright sales of stakes, he said at the conference.
In contrast with past governments' refusal to engage in American-inspired "positive discrimination", Macron said he would give companies who hire people from 200 designated poor neighbourhoods a 15,000 euros bonus over three years.
"The project that we are bringing forward is not a project that consists in helping those who have already succeeded, to again succeed even more. But it is a real project of a economic and social mobility, that aims to allow each and everyone, where they have the talent, the capacity and the will, to succeed in our society," Macron said.
Later this month, Macron is set to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as he aims to shore up his international credibility. He met with British Prime Minister Theresa May in London last month.
"What I want to tell the Germans, the project that I have been carrying for many years is that, because we have to restore our credibility and manage our own reforms, to tell them that our Europe needs a policy of solidarity and stimulus and the key to that is the euro zone budget," Macron said.
In measures designed to appeal more to left-wing voters, Macron also said he would raise disability and old-age allowances by 100 euros a month and penalise employers who used too many short-term contracts.
Macron's economic policies have broad approval from around 63 percent of voters, according to a poll by Odoxa published on Thursday. Almost half of voters polled believed they would improve the French economy. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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