PARIS — Jean-Luc Mélenchon pointed to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez as proof that greater public spending can boost the French economy and repair its strained public finances.

“Ever since Spain adopted a budget focused on ecological and social growth, it has experienced steady growth and a decline in its debt,” said Mélenchon, the leading left-wing candidate for next year’s presidential election in France.

In a press conference focused on the budget on Wednesday, the 75-year-old radical doubled down on his calls for a positive demand shock driven by billions in new state spending. He also reiterated his proposal to write off billions of euros in French debt held by the European Central Bank, which has drawn strong criticism, including from ECB President Christine Lagarde.

Polls show Mélenchon neck and neck with center-right candidate Édouard Philippe in the race to qualify for a second-round runoff against Marine Le Pen, the far-right frontrunner who presented her own budget plans last week.

Under Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Spain has significantly reduced its budget deficit, while public debt is projected to fall below 100% of GDP in 2026. His government has raised the minimum wage and supported investment in green energy, alongside other sectors. Although inflation is a major concern and economic growth is expected to moderate in 2027, Spain remains one of Europe’s fastest-growing major economies, with the IMF on Tuesday forecasting 2.5% growth in 2026.

Spanish deficit fell significantly under Sánchez, and became one of the Eurozone’s fastest-growing economies after the pandemic.

Spain’s debt-to-GDP ratio dropped below 100% — while France’s raised to 119% — as the government invested heavily in sectors such as green energy and raised the minimum wage. But the cost of living remains a major concern in the country, particularly housing — one of the issues that led Sánchez to call a snap election earlier this month.

More money, less problems?

Mélenchon wants to boost growth by increasing purchasing power through higher salaries — including a higher minimum wage, a 10% raise for public-sector workers and a nationwide round of collective bargaining — as well as higher benefits for welfare recipients and a monthly payment of €1,337 for every French student intended to lift them above the poverty line.

Together, these measures form what his campaign calls an €82 billion “emergency spending” package.

Eric Coquerel, a Mélenchon ally who heads the French National Assembly’s powerful finance committee, argued in the same press conference that the new spending would drive GDP growth and increase tax revenue.

He also outlined ways to fund it, including a 2% wealth tax on households worth more than €100 million, popularized by French economist Gabriel Zucman, and higher taxes on large inheritances, which would be capped at €12 million under a Mélenchon presidency.

Fiscally conservative think tanks such as Institut Montaigne have argued that Mélenchon significantly underestimated the cost of his proposed spending and the potential tax revenue in previous campaigns. Critics also warn of capital flight if he is elected president, as occurred after his political mentor François Mitterrand was elected in 1981 on a platform of mass nationalizations.

Mélenchon blamed the current state of France’s finances on President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to cut several taxes early in his presidency, a move Macron said was intended to attract more investment.

“There are no other causes [of the deficit] than the systematic depletion of the state orchestrated by Macronism,” Mélenchon said.

“We are pitting the virtuous cycle of ecological and social recovery… against the vicious cycle of Macronist budgets and the dismantling of the state,” he added.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s government has presented a budget with €43 billion in spending cuts, aiming to reduce France’s deficit to 5% of GDP without raising taxes. This year’s deficit is expected to reach 5.4% of GDP, missing the initial 5% target.

The counter-proposal from Mélenchon’s France Unbowed includes €106.4 billion in additional revenue and €81.7 billion in further spending, according to Coquerel, leaving about €25 billion to reduce the deficit.

France’s current center-right government is expected to pass its budget through the country’s hung parliament either by invoking a constitutional mechanism that allows the executive to pass legislation without a vote or by executive order. Mélenchon said his first order of business if elected in May would be to draft a new budget, which he hopes to pass in summer 2027.

France Unbowed advocates for a reduction of France’s contribution to the European Union, which presidential frontrunner Le Pen also wants to cut by €11 billion, though Coquerel clarified that he had not included a potential rebate in his economic forecasts.

Mélenchon intends to use the contribution as leverage to push for revised EU treaties, including scrapping the 3% deficit target for member countries and allowing national governments to adopt protectionist policies.

Critics, including Lagarde, said Mélenchon’s debt proposal was “dangerous” and potentially illegal because it could amount to direct financing of member countries by the ECB, which is prohibited by European treaties.

PARIS — Fresh off his dominant victory in a center-left primary over the weekend, French presidential candidate Raphaël Glucksmann slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to ease restrictions on Russian diesel exports as a move that benefits the Kremlin at Europe’s expense.

“There is, at the head of the United States, someone who is either a useful idiot or an agent of the destruction of European strength and freedom,” Glucksmann said at POLITICO’s Competitiveness Summit in Paris. “[Russia’s war against Ukraine] targets us directly, us Europeans, and we are alone.”

The MEP also insisted that sending his far-right rival Marine Le Pen to the Elysée Palace in 2027 would be a victory for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and a step toward “the defeat of the European continent.”

Le Pen has previously expressed “a form of admiration” for Putin, and her party, the National Rally, received a loan from a Russian-linked bank in 2014. Le Pen said her party borrowed money overseas because French banks refused loans and that the loan had no impact on her political stances. The party has since paid back the funds.

Though Le Pen condemned Russia’s all-out war in Ukraine, some elected officials within her party remain strongly opposed to helping Ukraine and favor a stronger relationship with Russia.

At a POLITICO event last month, Le Pen said she believed France could provide Ukraine with military training and assistance but could no longer afford financial support given France’s budgetary constraints.

Le Pen currently boasts a double-digit lead over her competitors for the first round of next year’s presidential election, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. Glucksmann is in fourth, trailing former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. France’s presidential election will go to a runoff if neither of the top two candidates gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round.

In his interview with POLITICO, Glucksmann, one of the race’s strongest pro-European voices, doubled down on his support for a European Sky Shield for Ukraine and the need for a more robust, sovereign European defense industry — a push also endorsed by French President Emmanuel Macron and widely shared across the French political spectrum.

“For decades,” Glucksmann said, “we have delegated our sovereignty and our security to Washington, and we are now realizing what a mistake that was.”

In practical terms, however, Europe remains split over whether non-EU countries should be allowed to tap its defense money. France is leading the push to limit the outsiders’ access to the European Competitiveness Fund.

Glucksmann also said Europe should take on joint debt to fund defense projects — a proposal Germany and other fiscally conservative EU members have been loath to consider — instead of attempting member-state-to-member-state projects like the failed Franco-German next-generation fighter jet.

Without joint investment, he said, “no European countries, including Germany, will be able to face, in the short term, the war of the future” against powers like China, Russia and the U.S.

“It’s a life or death question,” Glucksmann said.

Wars abroad, protests at home

In a sweeping interview, Glucksmann outlined how his foreign policy, if elected president in April 2027, would involve strengthening ties with countries in central and eastern Europe instead of courting leaders like Putin or China’s Xi Jinping.

The next president, he said, “should go to Warsaw; should go to Tallinn,” rather than Beijing or Moscow. The MEP has frequently criticized Macron for hosting Putin at a lavish ceremony in the Versailles Palace in 2017 and offering Xi a tour of his grandmother’s village in southwest France in 2024.

The center-left candidate said Europe needed to “leverage its position of strength” when it comes to negotiations with China, with whom the bloc is trying to reduce its €1 billion-a-day trade deficit. He also said that the EU should stick by its goal of phasing out combustion engine vehicles by 2035 and invest in electric vehicles so as not to “abdicate” the sector to the Chinese.

Glucksmann is pitching himself to voters as a French president who will confront what he considers to be strongmen at the head of global powers like Xi, Putin and Trump.

With the presidential campaign under way, Glucksmann is also looking to strengthen his credentials on the domestic front. He said recent protests by high school students — which center, among other grievances, on the lack of substitute teachers in France, overcrowded classrooms and the run-down state of several schools — are “perfectly legitimate and justified.” He also argued that teachers are underpaid.

PARIS — French center-right presidential candidate Edouard Philippe accused his far-right rival Marine Le Pen of trying to force a Frexit in disguise with her euroskeptic campaign promises.

“There is something in Marine Le Pen’s proposals that has the potential to blow Europe up, or let’s say to crack it open,” Philippe said at POLITICO’s Paris Competitiveness Summit on Tuesday.

The former prime minister — who is currently the best-placed centrist candidate to challenge the front-running Le Pen, according to recent polls — said Le Pen’s plan to unilaterally demand a drastic cut to France’s contribution to the EU budget was akin to “saying you want out of Europe” without openly advocating for leaving the bloc. Le Pen had previously called for a referendum in France on leaving the EU but dropped the proposal after her crushing defeat to Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 presidential election. Her party, the National Rally, now says it wants to change the EU from within.

Philippe, a fiscal conservative who has been pitching himself as the voice of reason in a campaign dominated by populist rivals, also slammed budget plans Le Pen unveiled last week as “grotesque,” accusing her of pitching “fantasy” savings.

Le Pen’s fiscal plans have faced serious scrutiny since being presented, with many observers saying they either lack key details or overestimate savings on major proposals like immigration. Progressive think tank Terra Nova wrote in a note out Tuesday that Le Pen’s budget presentation was “riddled with errors and contradictions” as well as “botched estimates.”

“She isn’t even able to estimate the cost of the pension reform she is proposing,” Philippe said.

Le Pen said in August that her plan to bring France’s legal retirement age back down to 62 for most workers would cost €9 billion a year, and last week she said she would lay out at a later stage how she intends to fund her flagship pledge. However, the Institut Montaigne, a fiscally conservative think tank, estimated the proposal would cost €34.7 billion a year.

Philippe is hoping to convince voters that his fiscally conservative agenda is the right path in a country burdened by a ballooning public debt and a budget deficit still above 5% of gross domestic product, in breach of EU rules.

Philippe said France needed to get its finances back on track to regain credibility on the European stage after a “loss of influence” over the past few years.

Though he currently leads a crowded field of centrist candidates, Philippe’s campaign has struggled in recent weeks to gain momentum — and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon is now challenging the former PM for second place in the polls. France’s presidential election goes to a runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, and Le Pen’s strong poll numbers all but guarantee her a spot in the second round.

Tough on China

The former prime minister pitched a pragmatic European agenda with less regulatory burden, more focus on investment and a tougher approach to China.

Philippe had some harsh criticism for an already embattled flagship measure of the EU’s green deal, saying the 2035 combustion engine ban has been “disastrous.”

There was “a great naiveté toward China,” which ultimately benefited from Europe’s push on electric vehicles, Philippe said.

“We need to much better protect our market,” he added. “If one wants access to the European market, one has to manufacture in Europe. If a carmaker doesn’t manufacture here, then we have to slap high tariffs.”

The EU is in the process of drawing up new “Made in Europe” rules that would favor European producers over those outside the bloc, in response to trade practices by competitors like China and the United States.

Shortly before Philippe took the stage, European Commissioner for Industry Stéphane Séjourné said at the POLITICO event that a Franco-German deal trading stronger protections on the definition of Made in Europe in exchange for a loosening of combustion engine rules should be finalized “in the next few hours or in the next few days.”

On artificial intelligence, Philippe aligned himself with Macron, advocating for European sovereignty in the field and the need to regulate what he described as “an instrument of power.”

“What I see is an AI world making money for the U.S. with European savings and European data, and that bugs me,” he said.

PARIS — Raphaël Glucksmann’s unexpectedly decisive victory in France’s center-left primary may have won him the backing and resources of the once-powerful Socialist Party, but the 46-year-old MEP needs even more support if he wants to drive his distinctly pro-European platform all the way to the Elysée Palace.

All recent polls show Glucksmann is trailing far-right front-runner Marine Le Pen and her two main challengers for a spot in the presidential election’s second round: the far left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon and center-right former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. Mélenchon and Le Pen both want to fundamentally alter Paris’ relationship with Brussels, while Philippe is campaigning mostly on domestic issues.

If he wants to win the presidency, Glucksmann, the leader of the moderate left party Place Publique, needs to woo several constituencies at once: the undecided left-leaning voters considering throwing their support behind Mélenchon’s surging campaign as well as the centrist voters already struggling to choose between Philippe and Gabriel Attal, the head of President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

“We’re still a long way from the final list of candidates, and the political landscape is far from set in stone,” said Socialist MEP Christophe Clergeau, who had backed Glucksmann’s rival Olivier Faure in the center-left primary. “It’s up to [Glucksmann] to build momentum, unite the Socialist family … [and] reach out to all left-wing voters to demonstrate his ability to be our camp’s voice.”

But Glucksmann and his allies are confident that his strong showing in the primary — he won more than 66% of the vote in the first round, more than four times as many votes as his nearest competitor — is a sign of good things to come.

“All the citizens of the left who came, voted, took part have given me tremendous hope,” Glucksmann said in his victory speech. “The result is indisputable: I am tonight the candidate of the democratic left.”

Aurore Lalucq, a fellow S&D MEP and co-president of Place Publique, said the result “isn’t far from a landslide.”

“There is no doubt that his platform is widely supported, and that gives us the strength to rally others behind us,” she said. “The ability to unite comes from strength.”

The next battle

Glucksmann faces stiff competition from Mélenchon and his party, France Unbowed, for voters who lean left.

Glucksmann has long refused to work with France Unbowed. He has accused Mélenchon of using antisemitic tropes — an allegation that the presidential candidate has denied — as well as being insufficiently supportive of Ukraine and too friendly with China.

Mélenchon has been courting support from the French Greens, whose candidate Marine Tondelier is struggling in the polls. Glucksmann is also eyeing support from the Greens, who have frequently teamed up with the Socialists in the past, including during the early years of François Hollande’s presidency.

Tondelier is extremely critical of Glucksmann for his refusal to associate with France Unbowed and participate in a primary contest featuring the party. Her party, however, is increasingly torn between pro-Mélenchon and pro-Glucksmann voices.

An individual close to Glucksmann, who was granted anonymity to discuss campaign strategy, said the MEP is looking to build new alliances and argued that the French Greens “are not limited to Marine Tondelier.”

Then there’s the elephant inside the Socialist room. Hollande, the party’s last president who was elected in 2012 but chose not to run for reelection five years later due to dismal approval ratings, has dropped several clues about his plans to run for president again. He refused to take part in his party’s primary — instead waiting to see if the winner’s campaign would flail, giving him an opening to step in.

Glucksmann said in an interview Monday that Hollande had called him to congratulate him on his win, but the former president has not made a public statement since the primary results.

“I’ve known François Hollande for a long time … I’ll take him at his word, that he was waiting to see how things would look at the end of the year, and that if the momentum around the party’s primary candidate was strong, he wouldn’t undermine that momentum,” said Loïg Chesnais-Girard, the president of Brittany who backed Glucksmann in the primary.

“The focus right now is on building that momentum. And then we’ll see how things play out,” Chesnais-Girard said.