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France’s corporate bosses are racing to build contacts with Marine Le Pen’s far right after recoiling from the radical tax-and-spend agenda of the rival leftwing alliance in the country’s snap parliamentary elections.

Four senior executives and bankers told the Financial Times that the left — which polls suggest is the strongest bloc vying with Le Pen — would be even worse for business than the Rassemblement National’s unfunded tax cuts and anti-immigration policies.

“The RN’s economic policies are more of a blank slate that business thinks they can help push in the right direction,” a Cac 40 corporate leader said of Le Pen’s party, which is ahead of other groupings in the run-up to the two-round vote on June 30 and July 7. “The left is not likely to water down its hardline anti-capitalist agenda.”

Another major business leader and investor in France added: “If you had told me two weeks ago that the business world would be rooting for the RN and counting [President Emmanuel] Macron out, I would not have believed it.”

Both spoke anonymously out of fear of commenting publicly on politics during the lightning legislative election campaign triggered by Macron after his centrist alliance was crushed in European parliament elections by the RN. 

Le Pen’s lieutenant Jordan Bardella, who is expected to be prime minister if the RN wins an outright majority, had already begun to woo business leaders in closed-door meetings in recent months, said investment bankers in Paris and executives.

Jean-Philippe Tanguy, an RN MP who works on economic policy, said he had been getting calls from lobbyists, investors and companies eager to understand the party’s plans. 

“We’ve told them that the RN will hold the line on deficits and present a credible plan,” he said. “The markets will be severe on us, so we really have no choice but to do so.” 

Markets responded to the political uncertainty by sending the blue-chip Cac 40 index down more than 5 per cent between the announcement of the elections just over a week ago and Monday’s close.

The spread between benchmark French and German bond yields — a market barometer for the risk of holding France’s debt — has risen 0.31 percentage points since the election was called in the sharpest weekly move since the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011.

Another high-level executive said the prospect of either far-right or leftwing parties setting France’s economic strategy was “a choice between the plague and cholera”.

Both the far right and the leftwing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance want a radical break with Macron’s business-friendly economic policies. 

The president has cut production taxes on corporations, made it easier for companies to fire workers and wooed foreign companies, including JPMorgan Chase, Pfizer and Amazon, to invest in France. Unemployment has fallen and recession has not set in as elsewhere in Europe.

But his government has also hugely expanded public borrowing during the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy shock linked to the war in Ukraine.

The RN, which has not issued a full economic programme, has signalled it could revoke Macron’s flagship pensions reform later in the year after an audit of public accounts. It has made this a key campaign promise.

The party has said it will keep its promises to cut value added tax on energy and fuel, which the government says will cost €16bn. But in a sign of the far-right’s attempts to reassure voters and the markets, Bardella on Monday night postponed a €7bn VAT cut on household necessities. The RN also says it would give French companies preference in procurement, a violation of EU competition rules.

Le Pen has sought to reassure business. “Financial markets don’t really understand the National Rally’s project,” she told Le Figaro on Sunday. “They have only heard the caricature of our project. When they read about it, they find it rather reasonable.”

The leftwing NFP alliance has not made similar overtures. But it depicts its economic plans as more responsible because of billions of euros in planned tax rises to pay for the increased spending. 

“We will finance this programme by dipping into the pockets of those who can most afford it,” said Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist party.

The NFP’s programme includes scrapping Macron’s pension reforms, increasing public sector salaries and welfare benefits, while raising the minimum wage by 14 per cent and freezing the price of basic food items and energy.

It would reintroduce a wealth tax, scrap many tax breaks for the better-off and raise income tax for the highest earners. 

Corporate bosses recoil at such ideas. “The left’s economic programme is totally unacceptable and would amount to France leaving the capitalist system,” said a high-profile entrepreneur anguished over the choice in the election. “Bardella may look reassuring but the far right represents a threat to democracy, not only the economy.”

Others are more sanguine. Matthieu Pigasse, an investment banker at Centerview who specialises in sovereign debt advisory, said the French economy was “protected by the euro” and the EU itself, even if the Eurosceptic RN has long criticised them.

“In a historical irony, the euro will immunise [the economic impact] from the left or the far-right,” he told L’Express magazine.

Additional reporting Ben Hall in Paris

Social media platforms are part of what the U.S. Surgeon General is calling a youth mental health crisis.

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Social media platforms are part of what the U.S. Surgeon General is calling a youth mental health crisis.

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Emma Lembke was only 12 years old when many of her friends started using phones and social media.

“Each one of them, as a result, was getting pulled away from kind of conversation with me, from hanging out with me, from even, like, playing on the playground, hanging out outside at school. It felt as though my interactions were dwindling,” Lembke told NPR.

It wasn’t just her experience. On average, teens in the U.S. are spending nearly 5 hours on social media every single day.

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And the children and adolescents who are spending these hours on social media seem to be paying the price.

Those who spend more than 3 hours a day on social media have double the risk of mental health problems like depression and anxiety.

Clinical psychologist Lisa Damour, who specializes in adolescent anxiety says the more time a teen spends on their phone, the less likely they are to be focusing on other aspects of their life.

“Too much time on social media gets in the way of things that we know are good for kids, like getting a lot of sleep, spending time with people and interacting face to face, being physically active, focusing on their schoolwork in a meaningful way,” Damour told NPR. “So that’s one place that we worry about that they are missing out on things that are good for overall growth.”

The Surgeon General’s call to action.

Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General, has called attention to what he has called the “youth mental health crisis” that is currently happening in the U.S.

This week, he published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for social media warning labels like those put on cigarettes and alcohol, in order to warn young people of the danger social media poses to their mental wellbeing and development. He cites the success of the tobacco and alcohol labels that have discouraged consumption.

“The data we have from that experience, particularly from tobacco labels, shows us that these can actually be effective in increasing awareness and in changing behavior. But they need to be coupled with the real changes, [like] the platforms themselves,” Murthy said in conversation with Consider This host Mary Louise Kelly.

“Right now, young people are being exposed to serious harms online, to violence and sexual content, to bullying and harassment, and to features that would seek to manipulate their developing brains into excessive use.”

Part of Murthy’s guidance includes keeping children off of social media platforms until their critical thinking skills have had more time to grow and strengthen against what the algorithms might be showing them.

“Imagine pitting a young person, an adolescent, a teenager against the best product engineers in the world who are using the most cutting edge of brain science to figure out how to maximize the time you spend on a platform. That is the definition of an unfair fight, and it’s what our kids are up against today.”

New guidelines moving forward.

Damour says that the Surgeon General’s call for a label is a great start to addressing the larger issue of how phone addictions are affecting young people.

“The other thing that is really important about the Surgeon General’s recommendation is that he’s calling for legislation. He’s calling for congressional action to get in there and help with regulating what kids can be exposed to, she said. “And I think this is huge right now. This is entirely in the laps of parents, and they are left holding the bag on something that really should be managed at a legal congressional level.”

Both Murthy and Damour say that raising awareness of certain strategies for parents can also help teenagers maintain more balanced lives.

This can include:

• Waiting until after middle school to let kids get social media profiles.
• Using text messages as an intermediary step in allowing teens to keep in touch with their peers.
• And maintaining “phone free zones” around bedtime, meals, and social gathering.

This episode was produced by Marc Rivers, Kathryn Fink and Karen Zamora, with additional reporting from Michaeleen Doucleff. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Justine Kenin. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has promised to give Hungary’s Viktor Orbán an opt-out of Nato activities supporting Ukraine if he is made secretary-general of the military alliance, in a pledge aimed at securing Budapest’s support after months of vetoing his proposed appointment.

Rutte, who is backed by 29 of Nato’s 32 member countries to become the next secretary-general — including the US, UK, France and Germany — has had his path blocked by Hungary’s prime minister, the alliance’s most pro-Russia member.

Rutte and Orbán, who have clashed several times in the past, met on the sidelines of an EU leaders’ dinner in Brussels on Monday night, raising expectations Budapest’s block on the Nato appointment — which requires unanimity among alliance members — could soon be lifted.

The Dutch prime minister promised that under his tenure, Hungary would have a right to opt out of Nato activities in support of Ukraine and taking place outside the territory of its members, according to two people briefed on the discussions.

Orbán has long argued against western support for Ukraine as Kyiv seeks to defend itself against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

A spokesperson for Rutte said he and Orbán had a “good conversation” on Monday evening, and primarily discussed the outcome of a meeting last week between Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg and the Hungarian prime minister.

“PM Rutte will confirm to PM Orbán in writing what they have discussed. It was a good and open conversation and the two agreed to focus on the future,” the spokesperson added.

A Hungarian government spokesperson declined to comment.

Stoltenberg told Orbán last week that Hungary could opt out of Nato activities to support Ukraine, such as a plan for the alliance to take more control of military supplies to Kyiv and training of Ukrainian troops, as well as long-term financial support.

“I think that’s a good solution that will enable us to move forward on more support for Ukraine within the Nato framework without Hungary blocking,” Stoltenberg said at the time.

In the meeting between Rutte and Orbán on Monday evening, which took place as the EU’s 27 leaders discussed who would fill the bloc’s top jobs for the next five years, the Dutch prime minister did not apologise for past remarks about Orbán at Brussels summits, one of the people briefed on the discussions said.

Rutte has clashed with Orbán over the latter’s hardline views on homosexuality and Hungary’s judicial reforms.

The Dutch prime minister, who is likely to leave office in July after a new government is formed in The Hague, already has the backing of US President Joe Biden for the post of Nato secretary-general.

In addition to Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, whose president Klaus Iohannis has campaigned for the Nato job, have yet to publicly back him.

Rutte said the planned new Dutch government, which involves his liberal party but also far-right leader Geert Wilders, would continue to support Ukraine.

“When it comes to foreign policy, the new cabinet will fully continue its course in Europe and Nato with Ukraine,” he added. “There will be no change.”