Surrender, or tactical retreat?

投降，亦或是策略性让步？

Emmanuel Macron has tried to buy off his critics. He needs to do much more

法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙试图收买他的批评者，但需要做的更多

What sort of leader surrenders to the crowd? Any French president of the modern era, you might reply. On December 10th a queasy-looking Emmanuel Macron joined the long list of presidents who have been thrown off course by street protests. Hoping to placate the mob, he promised to increase the take-home pay of minimum-wage earners by 8%, to let workers get overtime pay and Christmas bonuses tax-free and to revoke higher social charges on modest pensions. That was his second u-turn in less than a week. On December 6th the government had cancelled the rise in fuel duty that had provoked the gilets jaunes (yellow jacket) protests. The direct cost of Mr Macron’s climb-down is about €10bn ($11bn), or around 0.4% of gdp a year. This threatens to send the French budget deficit crashing through the Maastricht limit of 3%, further setting back French hopes for deepening the euro zone. Mr Macron’s finance minister has vowed to find cuts to offset the extra spending.

什么样的领导人会向群众投降？你可能会说，任何一个现代的法国总统。12月10号，面露难色的埃马纽埃尔·马克龙成为因街头抗议而改变既定政策的众多总统中的一员。为能安抚这群暴民，他承诺将最低收入者们的税后薪资提高8%，对工人的加班薪资和圣诞节奖金免税，并取消适度养老金的社会费用。这是不到一周内他的第二次政策转向。12月6日，政府就已取消了引发黄马甲抗议的上调燃油税政策。马克龙的让步造成直接损失大约是100亿欧元（110亿美元），约合一年GDP的4%。这使得法国财政赤字可能突破《马斯特里赫特条约》限制的3%，并大大推迟法国深化欧元区改革的希望。马克龙的财务部长发誓将削减开支来抵消额外的支出。

注：马斯特里赫特条约简介

1.马城条约（马斯特里赫特条约，Maastricht Treaty）是为了加速欧共体各国一体化进程，1991年12月欧共体首脑们在荷兰马斯特里赫特就政治、经济和货币同盟的进一步强化达成了一个协议，简称《马约》。《马约》是欧洲货币史和国际货币体系发展演变史上的一个重要事件。其最终要求是在欧共体建立负责制定和执行欧共体货币政策的欧洲中央银行和发行统一的欧洲货币。

2.马城条约的标准

（1）通货膨胀率不得超过通膨率最低三个成员国平均值的1.5个百分点；

（2）财政赤字不得超过国内生产总值(GDP)的3%；

（3）公共债券不得超过GDP的60%。

To many, Mr Macron now looks like a president who can be cowed by flying bricks and sagging polls. His ability to bring about further reform is seriously, perhaps fatally, compromised. The gilets jaunes, having scented weakness, will surely press for more. A fifth successive Saturday of protest is now promised for December 15th. In a televised address Mr Macron admitted that he had been slow to acknowledge the hardships faced by ordinary people. He might have been more persuasive had he not recorded his speech in the grandest room in the Elysée palace, sitting behind a gilded desk.

对很多人来说，马克龙现在看起来像是一个会被抗议和下滑的民调吓到的总统。让步和妥协严重地削弱了他深化改革的能力，这甚至可能是致命的。已经嗅到虚弱气味的黄马甲们，肯定会施加更大的压力。连续第五个星期六的抗议活动现已定在12月15日举行（现已发生）。在一次电视演讲中，马克龙承认他对普通人们遭遇的困难生活后知后觉。如果不是坐在爱舍丽宫最华丽房间的镀金办公桌后面录制演讲，他的话可能会更让人信服。

And yet, in important ways, Mr Macron held firm. He insisted that he will not reverse an early decision to scrap France’s wealth tax. This infuriates many of the protesters, who call him the “president of the rich”. But it was right. Although Mr Macron never managed to convince voters of this, taxes on the rich had been raised to ludicrous levels by his Socialist predecessor, François Hollande. The wealth tax was routinely dodged and raised little money, but it helped scare off mobile wealth-creators. Just as scrapping the tax signalled that France was open for business, a u-turn would have suggested it had once again shut its doors.

然而，马克龙在一些重要方面依旧立场坚定。他坚称，他不会推翻早期取消法国财富税的决定。这一举措激怒了许多抗议者，他们称他为“富人的总统”，但这种做法是对的。尽管马克龙从未成功说服选民相信这一点，但他的社会党前任总统弗朗索瓦·奥朗德(François Hollande)已将富人的税负提高到荒唐的水平。人们通常可以规避财富税，上缴的税收少得可怜，但它却吓跑了那些流动性很强的财富创造者们。就像取消税收意味着法国对企业开放一样，政策的180度大转弯也意味着法国已经再次关上了开放的大门。

注：前任弗朗索瓦·奥朗德 特富税French taxation François Hollande remains intent on introducing a punishing top income-tax

https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21569068-fran%C3%A7ois-hollande-remains-intent-introducing-punishing-top-income-tax-%C3%A0-bas-les-riches

Even more important, Mr Macron gave no hint that he would delay or ditch any of his crucial labour-market overhaul. Although this is not perfect, it has stripped away some of the rules that cosset workers who already have jobs but deter companies from hiring new staff. The reform caps the size of unfair-dismissal awards and curbs the power of labour unions to impose industry-wide agreements on hours, pay and overtime. Already, these changes seem to be boosting employment. If Mr Macron had backtracked, investors would have concluded that France was as unreformable as Italy.

更重要的是，马克龙也没有暗示他会推迟甚至放弃任何关于劳动力市场的重大改革举措。虽然并不完美，但改革取消了一些规则，这些规则纵容那些已经有工作但阻碍公司招聘新员工的员工们。改革限制了不公平解雇的规模以及工会在商议行业工时、薪酬和加班方面的权力。这些变化似乎正在促进就业。但如果马克龙放弃，投资者就会得出结论，法国和意大利一样无力改革，不可救药。

注：马克龙劳动力市场改革

http://www.cfen.com.cn/dzb/dzb/page_6/201802/t20180212_2812210.html

To have a chance of enacting the rest of his agenda, Mr Macron must persuade voters that this week’s shifts in policy were not a surrender but a tactical retreat. Much of the €10bn he is giving the left-behind is in the form of a wage subsidy for low-paid workers, which boosts their incomes without eroding the incentive to work. This is a good idea; indeed, he should have done it at the start of his presidency.

为了能使其剩余的议案得以执行，马克龙必须使得选民相信本周的政策的改变是战术撤退，而不是屈服。他给予低收入群体的100亿欧元中大部分的钱，是以工资补贴的形式进行，旨在提高他们的收入，但并没有打击他们工作的积极性。这是一个好办法，事实上他应该在刚上任时就这么做。

Other changes will be less popular, but they are just as necessary. Mr Macron wants to simplify and curb the growth of France’s unsustainable pension system. Inevitably that will require workers to toil longer or receive smaller pensions than they had been expecting. Faster economic growth would ease the pain, and would be easier if the French state was smaller. The government spends 56% of gdp each year, one of the world’s highest shares. It also owns stakes in almost 100 firms, most of which ought to be fully privatised.

其他政策不会那么受欢迎，但这都是必行之举，马克龙想简化法国退休金体系，抑制其不可持续的增长。这就意味着工人工时要延长，得到的退休金也会低于预期。如果法国经济增长更快，这种痛苦将能得到缓解，或者法国是个小国家，这种痛苦也更容易减轻。法国政府每年的支出占GDP的56%，是世界上支出比例最高的国家之一。法国政府拥有近100家公司的股份，这些公司大部分应该完全私有化。

None of these reforms can be sold from behind a gilded desk. Mr Macron needs to roll up his sleeves and explain to people in plain, un-haughty terms why his plans will make France better off. If he cannot manage that, he will fail.

没有一项改革是可以坐在镶金边的办公桌后面就可以轻松完成的。马克龙需要卷起袖子加油干，用平实近人的话语向民众解释清楚为什么他的计划能让法国变得更好，如果做不到这一点，他必将失败。