The first debate of France’s upcoming presidential election, hosted by employer federation Medef two weeks ago, was strangely reminiscent of Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Like the aging, angry monarch asking his three daughters “who doth love us most?”, corporate leaders asked the leading seven candidates what more they could do for business.

“If I paid less in social security contributions, I could hire more people,” one employer said. “By how much would you reduce these charges?”

Goneril, Lear’s eldest, knew which side her bread was buttered on: “I love you more than words can wield the matter…dearer than eyesight, space and liberty,” she vowed, as her father duly endowed her with a third of the kingdom.

Republican candidate Bruno Retailleau similarly bowed and scraped before business leaders in a piece of overacted pantomime: “It’s not corporations that should serve the government, it’s the government that should serve corporations.” The former interior minister promised to dismantle the “predatory, red-tape-ridden state” treating companies like “cash cows.”

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen pledged to abolish corporate taxes, and former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, to warm applause, promised to cut labour costs and social spending.

The Bidding has Begun

And so it continued: an embarrassing auction where candidates declared their devotion to an unchanging corporate agenda. Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe would put an end to the “open bar” and slash paid sick leave, decreeing that those physically able to press on would keep working until they’re 67. So, the state’s budgetary gaps would be narrowed not by squeezing tax revenues from firms earning eye-watering sums in recent years, but by targeting labour and slashing social services.

Four of the seven candidates proposed a continuation of the policies that have taken national debt to stratospheric levels – more than €3 trillion – over the past decade, due in no small part to Macron’s pro-business reforms: abolishing the wealth tax (ISF), dropping the corporate tax rate from 33% to 25%, and reducing employer social-security contributions.

Attal, Retailleau and frontrunner Le Pen promised to give companies even more, while reducing public spending.

“This is a gathering of magicians,” observed left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “You don’t want to pay for anything, and you’re sending the bills back to the state – who do you think pays for everything?”

Airbrushing the Working Class

For most of the three-hour debate, the 10 million workers employed by the executives in the room went mostly unmentioned. That is until Mélenchon warned of a recession unless wages were raised. The audience burst into spontaneous, collective laughter – a reaction so disturbing that it featured in the next day’s news.

“You won’t be laughing for long,” Mélenchon shouted in reply. “Consumer spending accounts for 55% of GDP. You’ll be laughing through gritted teeth if you don’t share the wealth.”

Here as elsewhere, the income gap is widening. While real wages fell by 12% between 2019 and 2025, French CEO compensation soared by 54% to an average of €7.3 million. France’s corporate giants in the CAC 40 generated enough profit last year to pay shareholders more than €100 billion in dividends – a record sum.

Meanwhile, public aid to companies has exploded. Recent investigations estimate corporate subsidies and tax breaks at between €211 billion and €270 billion annually.

Even titans like TotalEnergies and luxury goods giant LVMH enjoy state support, supposedly to drive growth.

But with few conditions attached, public money does nothing to guarantee employment gains in the private sector: Pharmaceutical company Sanofi, for example, pocketed roughly €100 million in annual R&D subsidies while outsourcing operations and eliminating more than 1,000 domestic jobs.

Jet Ski Generation

Corporate bosses getting the giggles at the mere mention of a pay rise captures the contempt of a significant segment of France’s elite. Just as telling was last month’s frontpage splash of a tanned Macron posing on a jet ski while forests and homes burned in wildfires, and tenants suffocated in stifling flats during France’s hottest summer on record.

Back at the Medef pageant and above the sycophantic serenade, only one voice could be heard decrying the cruel absurdity of the country’s privileged and powerful gathering to ask how much more they could extract from a struggling treasury.

The leader of La France insoumise – “Unbowed” – claimed he could balance the books in one fell swoop, if he liked: by ending public support for businesses.

The laughter stopped as the stakes of next April’s election sank in. We are seeing a power struggle between those catering to corporations, and a growing movement calling for the return of a strong state unafraid of intervening in economic central planning – and demanding more in return.

The very thought – along with Mélenchon’s recent rise in the polls – is enough to cause the country’s corporate chieftains to break out in a cold sweat.