Review of Collaborations: Enquête sur l’extrême droite et les milieux d’affaires by Laurent Mauduit (La Découverte, 2025)
In 2024, the blue-chip companies on France’s CAC 40 stock index issued a record-breaking €98.2 billion in dividends. Thanks to rising real estate valuations, France ranks third in the total number of dollar-millionaires, after the United States and China. Depending on the ticker price for luxury groups like LVMH or Hermès, the country can also claim to lead Europe in terms of aggregate billionaire wealth.
All this in a country that the business pages often deride as the sick man of Europe. Perhaps not in recent memory has there been a better time to be rich than in Emmanuel Macron’s France, where corporations and shareholders have won several major victories since his first election as president in 2017.
Yet not all is rosy for French capital. When Macron called snap parliamentary elections in June 2024, it was a blow to his own political allies, who won under one-third of seats in a divided National Assembly. More than that, he left France’s business lobby without a reliable political home, as it pines for major cuts to public spending and welfare. Eighteen months ahead of the 2027 presidential elections, it’s unclear if anyone in the centrist and conservative establishment can provide a revamped offering. To avoid another dissolution of parliament, the president’s allies seem ready to agree to modest concessions like light tax increases and a suspension of their hard-fought 2023 increase in the pension age.
In politics, too, it’s important to hedge bets. Frustrated by the fraying discipline in Macron’s camp, and wary of the lingering left-wing threat, key corporate leaders are coming to terms with the idea that Marine Le Pen, or another candidate from her Rassemblement National, could soon come to power. It’s a focus of rising speculation in France — and a new book by journalist Laurent Mauduit, Collaborations,…
Auteur: Harrison Stetler
