French mayors have warned the Macron government that the country is heading “straight into the wall” over surging energy costs in the country.
Municipality energy cost increases of up to 400 per cent will drive significant portions of France “straight into the wall” in 2023, a host of mayors have warned the country’s government, with local leadership now reportedly struggling to even conceive how they could possibly balance the budget of their local regions.
The warning comes as an ever more desperate administration helmed by President Emmanuel Macron tries desperately to keep a handle on the ongoing energy crisis, with the head of state himself no repeatedly urging citizens to practice “energy sobriety” as the central European state enters a period which he calls the “end of abundance“.
However, such efforts — which in recent days even extended to crushing strike action by local oil workers — appear to be failing, with leaders within the region of Paris publicly warning the national executive that they would be able to survive the energy prices of the coming year.
“We are going straight into the wall,” Le Figaro reports mayors from the region, which is the most populous in France, as saying.
One official in particular, Romain Colas of Boussy-Saint-Antoine, is reported by the publication as expressing complete bewilderment as how he could possibly balance his town’s public finances, with the leader expecting gas prices alone to rise by 500 per cent next year.
“I have been mayor for fifteen years and this is the first time that I have no idea how I will be able to balance my budget,” Colas told the paper, with others urging for politicians to take a more active approach in dealing with the crisis in an open letter published on Tuesday.
While officials within the wider Parisian region of France are now begging for further government intervention to tackle the energy crisis, measures taken by the Macron government so far have seemingly done little to avert the feeling of impending doom for many in the country.
With the supply of Russian fossil fuels into Europe falling significantly, Emmanuel Macron has taken to begging the French public to use less energy in a bid to prevent the need for rationing, with the term “energy sobriety” becoming a well-known political phrase in France over the last two months.
“The solution is in our hands,” Macron said earlier last month, having previously warned the public that the country was entering the “end of abundance“, and that they needed to “agree to pay the price” of current hardships to uphold Macron’s own value system.
Like other bigwigs across Europe, Macron also warned the public of the rise of so-called “illiberal regimes” that say they will address the problem, echoing sentiments in Germany that populists politicians could see a massive surge in support as the mainstream fails to deal with the current energy situation.
However, while the Macron government is now threatening to crush strike action they perceive as exacerbating ongoing hardship, they have yet to label those willing to protest them “enemies of the state“, like at least one official in Germany has already done.
North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul slammed those looking to challenge the floundering German political ascendency over their repeated policy failures as “conspiracy theorists”, attacking them for “increasingly addressing the issues” the general public cares about.
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