The current number two of the Medef and candidate for its presidency Patrick Martin presented Tuesday a program pleading the need for growth to solve the climate crisis and ensure the sustainability of the French social model. The program "does not break with everything we have done with Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux over the last five years", but is part of an "environment that has changed" with in particular the important place taken by the "climate peril", "which explains why we amplify a certain number of subjects" or that we deal with new ones, explained Patrick Martin during a press conference.
According to the candidate who faces for the presidency of the Medef the current vice-president of the employers' organization Dominique Carlac'h, "our country is in relative difficulty because it does not produce enough". "Without growth I do not see how we will finance the massive investments to which we are required - companies, households, the public sphere too - to maintain the trajectory of decarbonization, I do not see how we will create jobs and the purchasing power to which our fellow citizens legitimately aspire, I do not see how we will sustainably balance our social systems," Patrick Martin said.
Asked about the conclusions of the report by economist Jean Pisani-Ferry which recommends increased public debt and exceptional taxation of the financial wealth of the richest to finance the investments necessary to fight against global warming, Patrick Martin said that this would send a very negative message "and would divert investments from the France". He also insisted on the imperative of growth to "ensure the sustainability of our social model whose financing will be increasingly demanding with the aging of the population", according to his program which affirms that "there is no redistribution without growth".
The current deputy president of Medef was surrounded by Paola Fabiani, president of Comex 40, an "incubator of ideas" of Medef, and Bastien Brunis, president of Medef Est Parisien (Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne). Both will be "called upon to exercise responsibilities" within his team at the head of the Medef if he is elected, as well as the current vice-president Fabrice Le Saché, who also supports his candidacy, said Patrick Martin. Dominique Carlac'h will hold a press conference on Wednesday. The election will take place on July 6.