{"id":183615,"date":"2025-08-29T02:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/183615\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T02:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:04:08","slug":"french-presidential-hopefuls-blast-pm-then-turn-on-each-other-in-early-debate-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/183615\/","title":{"rendered":"French presidential hopefuls blast PM, then turn on each other in early debate \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The debate closed out a two-day conference organized by France\u2019s largest employers\u2019 association, MEDEF, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/francois-bayrou-44-billion-euro-budget-squeeze-not-austerity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">at which Bayrou spoke earlier in the day<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Bardella accused various governments under Macron of bringing France to the precipice of \u201cbankruptcy,\u201d while Bompard maintained the only way to \u201cstop the chaos\u201d was to bring down Bayrou\u2019s government.<\/p>\n<p>Even Attal and Retailleau, whose parties both back Bayrou\u2019s government, distanced themselves from the prime minister. Retailleau, who has been rising in the polls in recent months, said France needed \u201ca frank break\u201d from the status quo. Attal said Bayrou\u2019s budget plans weren\u2019t \u201cstunning\u201d but necessary.<\/p>\n<p>The exchanges became so heated, and the boos and cheers from the spectators so loud, that MEDEF head Patrick Martin had to ask the audience, composed mainly of business leaders, to calm down and \u201crespect the participants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The potential presidential candidates quickly turned on each other, as many already have their eyes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/emmanuel-macron-three-choice-francois-mayrou-government-fall\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on possible snap parliamentary elections<\/a> and the presidential vote in 2027.<\/p>\n<p>The centrist Attal accused the far-right Bardella of contradicting himself on his support for a wealth tax, while Bardella hit back at Attal with repeated questions about whether he was \u201chappy with the economic situation\u201d his party had helped create. Bardella and Retailleau, both courting similar electorates, sparred over the European Green Deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The debate closed out a two-day conference organized by France\u2019s largest employers\u2019 association, MEDEF, at which Bayrou spoke&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":183616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[3232,64,79,90,103193,156,8705,103194,103195,26450,103196,620,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-183615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-european-green-deal","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-francois-bayrou","15":"tag-gabriel-attal","16":"tag-jordan-bardella","17":"tag-macron","18":"tag-manuel-bompard","19":"tag-tax","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115109603781831089","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}