Just five days before the first round of the 2022 presidential election, five candidates were invited to the show Elysee 2022Tuesday April 5 on France 2. Philippe Poutou, Eric Zemmour, Yannick Jadot, Valérie Pécresse and Anne Hidalgo answered questions from journalists and provided several facts and figures. 20 minutes checked them.
FAKE OFF
Eric Zemmour: “55% of non-European foreigners are inactive”
False. Faithful to his political line, the candidate of the Reconquest party cast opprobrium on foreigners, in particular on non-European foreigners. Of the 2.2 million people living in France who were born in a country outside the European Union, 849,100 are inactive, according to Eurostat. This therefore corresponds to a figure of 38%. A rate above the average in France, which is 29% but far enough from the 55% put forward by Eric Zemmour.
Valérie Pécresse: “Violence increased by 32% during Macron’s five-year term”
To qualify. The words of Valérie Pécresse suggest that she is referring here to intentional blows and injuries to people aged 15 or over. According to figures published by the Ministry of the Interior last January, the number of intentional assaults recorded by the police in 2017 was 233,600, compared to 306,700 in 2021, an increase of 31.9%.
However, these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Firstly because these figures will only be consolidated next June, as the ministry explains. Then because these statistics have been disrupted by the Covid-19. And finally because other categories, such as thefts with weapons, violent thefts without weapons or voluntary destruction and degradation, for example, have fallen over the same period. To speak of “violence” is therefore misleading.
Anne Hidalgo: “According to the report of the Pensions Orientation Council (COR), there is no problem with the medium and long-term sustainability of our pension system”
Eric Zemmour: “According to the COR, the retirement age must be increased to 64 to return to equilibrium”
Rather true. The two candidates cited the report of the Pensions Orientation Council (COR) to defend their position with regard to the legal retirement age. Status quo at 62 for the socialist candidate, push it back to 64 for the polemicist. And both are partly right.
In 2020, spending on pensions represented 14.7% of national wealth, “a particularly high level”, according to the COR report. But the report also notes that this share should drop from 2030, to between 11.3% and 13%. Without pension reform, the system should be balanced by 2050, as explained economist Eric Heyer at France InfoMarch 26, 2022. A point for the socialist candidate.
Eric Zemmour relies for his part on a hypothesis of the same COR which recommends retirement at age 64 from 2030 to structurally balance the pension system “every year until 2070”.
Yannick Jadot: “We have 27 nuclear reactors shut down today, half of our electrical power is shut down. »
True. The environmentalist candidate is well informed since, according to RTE, the electricity transport manager, 27 nuclear reactors were indeed shut down on the weekend of April 2 and 3. This represents half of the 56 reactors that account the French park according to the figures of EDF.
However, this figure changes regularly since the reactors can be shut down for “ten-yearly outages”, for technical and safety checks, or for exceptional reasons, such as the three reactors Chinon 3, Cattenom 3 and Bugey 4, shut down for a few months due to corrosion problems.
Philippe Poutou: “Macron cut hospital beds during the health crisis”
True. This accusation comes up very often in the mouths of the opponents of the President of the Republic. We have already verified this information thanks to figures from the Dress which confirm that 5,700 hospital beds were eliminated during the year 2020.