How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

The man with le Plan

P A R I S

President Emmanuel Macron revives a post-war institution for a post-covid era

Europe

26 Belarus and Russia

27 Germany’s envoy to Poland

27 Mink in the Netherlands

28 Charlemagne: The semi-political

European Commission

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26

Europe

The Economist

September 5th 2020

2

private-sector firms as well as on public

planning. The uncertainties of the post-co-

vid-19 world, argue the new Plan’s defend-

ers, require new thinking. “Planning hasn’t

become part of the new orthodoxy,” says Mr

Pisani-Ferry; “but it’s no longer taboo.” Mr

Bayrou’s role will be one of reflection rath-

er than execution. Bruno Le Maire, the fi-

nance minister, remains firmly in charge

of public spending.

Which is why it was no coincidence that

Jean Castex, the new prime minister, was

due to launch the Plan on the same day that

he unveiled his €100bn ($119bn) stimulus

package. This will be spent over two years,

with two-fifths of the sum coming from the

new European Union recovery fund. Part of

the idea is short-term: to keep businesses

afloat and people in jobs during a deep re-

cession. The French economy shrank by a

massive 13.8% in the second quarter—less

than in Spain but more than in Germany—

and is forecast to contract by 11% during

2020. The government has already said, for

example, that it will extend for two years its

generous furlough schemes, which have

covered up to 12m people, albeit with a de-

creased state contribution. It has promised

tax cuts for business. And Mr Castex has

made an “absolute commitment” not to

raise any taxes.

Yet the idea is also to turn the crisis into

an opportunity to increase and redirect

public investment. On the one hand, there

will be plenty of green measures (insula-

tion of buildings, investment in hydrogen

and research), as well as the expansion of

high-speed broadband and local infra-

structure. On the other, there will be a

boost for skills, apprenticeships and train-

ing, particularly for the young. Unlike Ger-

many, France will focus less on demand-

led stimulus than on supporting business-

es and investment. Thanks in part to

government help, French consumers built

up savings during lockdown and incomes

were broadly preserved. The hope is that, if

confidence returns, they will now start to

spend them. 

Does all this add up to a 

u

-turn for Mr

Macron, a liberal centrist elected on a pro-

mise to disrupt France? The word planning

was unuttered during his election cam-

paign. Now, he has put reforms to benefits

and pensions on hold and a bureaucrat, Mr

Castex, in charge of the government. Mr

Macron says he is using the moment to “ac-

celerate” his transformation of France, not

abandon it. The reforms, he insists, will

eventually resume. It may be that the old-

fashioned feel of the Plan is deliberate: not

because it heralds a return to five-year

plans, but because it aims to tell the French

that, despite the pandemic, the govern-

ment is still in control. “My philosophy,”

says Mr Macron, with a nod to Monnet, is

“the transformation, the modernisation of

the country; it cannot stop.” 

7

I

t was the

cables that gave them away. As

foreign and local journalists in Belarus

scrambled to report on the latest crack-

down on peaceful protesters, one film crew

was always in prime position. Its members

were untouched whenever police hounded

other journalists, stripping them of their

accreditation and deporting them. The

camera cables that stretched past several

unmarked police minibuses led to the

source of their protection: a white and

green van belonging to Russia Today. 

Russia’s “green men”, unbadged sol-

diers sent to Ukraine after its revolution in

2014, are yet to make an appearance in Bela-

rus. But the Kremlin’s propaganda warriors

have already occupied its airwaves. Their

invasion was solicited by Alexander Lu-

kashenko, Belarus’s embattled dictator,

who has lost any claims to legitimacy first

by rigging the recent presidential election,

then by unleashing terror against the large

numbers of his people who protested.

Shocked by the violence of the security

services, workers in state-owned factories,

who were once Mr Lukashenko’s most solid

backers, went on strike. Journalists for

state television, normally obedient ser-

vants of the regime, walked out of their stu-

dios in protest. Desperate to look more in

control, Mr Lukashenko appealed to Rus-

sia’s president, Vladimir Putin, for help.

Mr Putin cannot afford to let Mr Lukash-

enko be overthrown by popular protests.

He does not want to set a dangerous prece-

dent. The attempt to kill Russia’s main op-

position leader, Alexei Navalny, shows just

how nervous the Kremlin is feeling. But Mr

Putin has little desire to incur new Western

sanctions by sending soldiers to save Mr

Lukashenko. (Sanctions may be forthcom-

ing anyway, following Germany’s confir-

mation on September 2nd that Mr Navalny

was poisoned with a nerve agent similar to

ones used in other Russian-sponsored as-

sassinations, to which only state opera-

tives could have access.) Helping Belarus

improve its propaganda is more deniable

and less provocative than sending troops.

The change in programming wrought

by Russia is glaring. Before the information

takeover, Belarusian state 

tv

offered a

largely ineffective diet of Soviet and second

world war mythology—more Belarus Yes-

terday than Russia Today. The newly ar-

rived propagandists from Moscow have

wheeled out an arsenal of aggression and

divisiveness. Breathless news reports have

started to warn of the havoc caused by prot-

ests in France and Syria. Coverage also

seeks to discredit and sneer at the local

protests as creations of the West. Selective

editing depicts them as feebly supported

yet violent—and doomed to failure. A new

legion of experts warns of the dangers of a

split in Belarusian society. 

Mr Lukashenko, who has spent the past

two years rallying Belarusians around the

flag and feeding his army and security ser-

vices a yarn about Russia’s threat to the

country’s sovereignty, has abruptly

changed his tune. He talks these days about

one fatherland stretching from Brest, a city

in Belarus’s west, to Vladivostok in Russia’s

far east. “We now have no other choice but

to fasten our boat to the eastern shore,” one

senior and somewhat disoriented govern-

ment official says, landlocked Belarus be-

ing conspicuously lacking in shores. 

But sprucing up state television’s news

reports in this way may not have the in-

tended effect. The change is so sudden and

so obvious that it risks further alienating

citizens who have experienced a national

awakening in the past few weeks. The rush

of Russian-made propaganda might per-

suade some wavering Belarusians against

taking to the streets, but it seems unlikely

to change the minds of the hundreds of

thousands who are already there.

The Belarusians who brave police vio-

lence do not watch state television, but rely

instead on social media and messenger

groups, such as Nekhta (Someone), a Tele-

gram channel run by young Belarusians

from neighbouring Poland. It has quickly

clocked up over a billion page views. Being

told by Russia that they are mere extras in a

Western plot will make the protesters all

the more determined to prove themselves

leading actors in an historic drama. 

7

M I N S K