Society

Essential public services should not be treated primarily as markets.

Healthcare, education, transport, housing, culture, social protection, and other fundamental services exist because society has collective needs that cannot be reduced to individual purchasing power.

Public institutions should therefore be evaluated according to:

• accessibility;
• quality;
• equality of access;
• territorial coverage;
• continuity;
• resilience;
• long-term social value.

Financial profitability should not be their primary objective.

Healthcare should be overwhelmingly public.

Access to treatment should depend on medical need rather than wealth, employment status, or the profitability of a particular medical activity.

The state should therefore maintain strong responsibility for:

• hospitals;
• primary care;
• emergency medicine;
• specialist care;
• prevention;
• mental healthcare;
• medical training;
• pharmaceuticals;
• public-health infrastructure.

The progressive weakening of public healthcare through insufficient funding, staff shortages, closures, outsourcing, and excessive managerial pressure should be reversed.

Healthcare workers perform an essential public mission.

In the long term, I would favour a system in which healthcare professionals are predominantly part of a public service.

Doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists, emergency personnel, and other healthcare workers should be able to work within a stable public framework rather than depending primarily on fragmented private structures.

A stronger public status could support:

• territorial planning;
• continuity of care;
• stable staffing;
• equal access;
• coordinated medical services;
• long-term workforce planning.

Healthcare should be organised around population needs rather than around the profitability of individual procedures.

Access to healthcare should not depend heavily on where a person happens to live.

Public authorities should be able to organise the geographical distribution of healthcare professionals.

When medical education is largely financed collectively, society can legitimately expect part of the resulting medical capacity to serve areas where it is most needed.

This may require stronger incentives and, where necessary, temporary public service obligations for newly trained professionals in severely underserved areas.

Such policies should be accompanied by good working conditions, adequate staffing, housing assistance, infrastructure, and professional support.

The objective should not be to punish healthcare workers, but to ensure that the right to healthcare exists throughout the territory.

Private healthcare should remain limited where it competes directly with the public system for scarce staff, infrastructure, or profitable activities.

A parallel system in which profitable procedures migrate toward private providers while complex, emergency, or less profitable care remains public can weaken the collective system.

Private institutions may have a complementary role, but the public system should remain the central structure of healthcare.

Healthcare policy should not begin only when people become ill.

Public policy should invest heavily in:

• preventive medicine;
• vaccination;
• occupational health;
• environmental health;
• nutrition;
• addiction treatment;
• mental health;
• early screening;
• health education.

Prevention can improve both quality of life and the long-term sustainability of the healthcare system.

Education is one of the principal mechanisms through which equality of opportunity becomes real.

The state should therefore guarantee high-quality public education throughout the country.

Public education requires sufficient:

• teachers;
• support staff;
• infrastructure;
• laboratories;
• libraries;
• digital resources;
• training;
• time.

Cuts that progressively degrade these conditions ultimately increase social inequality.

Teachers should be better paid and better supported.

The quality of an education system depends heavily on the people who work within it.

Teacher shortages, excessive workloads, unstable staffing, and declining working conditions are incompatible with a serious long-term education policy.

Class sizes should be reduced where educational conditions require it.

Schools should also have sufficient administrative, medical, psychological, and educational support staff.

Schools and universities should not be organised as businesses.

Metrics, rankings, administrative targets, and management systems can provide useful information, but they should not replace educational judgement.

The objective of education is not to optimise a spreadsheet.

It is to develop knowledge, reasoning, autonomy, culture, scientific understanding, technical competence, and citizenship.

I support a public education system that is clearly dominant.

Private education may continue to exist, but public policy should not progressively weaken public education while financing parallel structures.

Public money should primarily reinforce institutions that are universally accessible and democratically accountable.

The public school system should be sufficiently good that choosing it never feels like accepting an inferior option.

Higher education should remain free or nearly free.

Financial barriers to university access are incompatible with equality of opportunity.

Universities should receive sufficient public funding to provide:

• good teaching conditions;
• adequate student capacity;
• laboratories;
• libraries;
• research infrastructure;
• housing support;
• student services.

Access to higher education should depend primarily on ability and educational choice rather than family wealth.

Public authorities have a legitimate responsibility to protect people from violence, crime, intimidation, and exploitation.

However, security policy should not be reduced to permanent expansion of criminal penalties, police powers, surveillance, and imprisonment.

A society cannot repress its way out of every social problem.

Security policy should combine:

• prevention;
• education;
• social policy;
• healthcare;
• addiction treatment;
• housing;
• policing;
• justice;
• reintegration.

The objective should be to reduce actual harm rather than simply increase the number of punitive measures.

Police are necessary public institutions and should have the resources needed to perform their mission properly.

At the same time, police power must be strongly controlled.

Police officers should receive high-quality training, appropriate working conditions, and clear operational doctrine.

There should also be:

• independent investigation of serious misconduct;
• effective judicial oversight;
• traceability of interventions where appropriate;
• transparent procedures;
• meaningful disciplinary mechanisms.

Public confidence requires both effective policing and accountability.

These objectives are complementary, not contradictory.

Justice should protect society while also recognising that punishment is not the only possible response to an offence.

The objective of criminal justice should include:

• protection of victims;
• prevention of further harm;
• rehabilitation;
• reintegration;
• proportionality;
• respect for fundamental rights.

Longer or harsher punishment should not automatically be treated as better justice.

Imprisonment should be used primarily where it is necessary to protect society or where the seriousness of an offence clearly justifies it.

For many minor and non-violent offences, alternatives to incarceration should be used more extensively.

These may include:

• community service;
• treatment programmes;
• education;
• supervised rehabilitation;
• restorative approaches;
• professional training.

Prisons themselves should provide meaningful access to healthcare, education, training, and preparation for reintegration.

A prison system that releases people in a worse condition than when they entered has failed part of its social function.

Drug policy should be based more strongly on public health and harm reduction than on criminal repression.

I support the decriminalisation or legalisation of some currently prohibited substances where regulation can reduce the harms created by prohibition.

The legal status of a substance should not be confused with an objective measure of its danger.

Public policy should evaluate substances according to:

• toxicity;
• dependence;
• public-health effects;
• social harms;
• patterns of use;
• risks to third parties.

Where a regulated legal market can replace a criminal market while providing quality control, prevention, age restrictions, treatment, and taxation, this option should be considered seriously.

Cannabis is a clear example where legal regulation should be considered in preference to a purely punitive approach.

A regulated legal framework could allow public authorities to control:

• product composition;
• age limits;
• distribution;
• advertising;
• taxation;
• prevention;
• health information.

It would also reduce the role of criminal markets in supplying the product.

Legalisation should not mean presenting cannabis as harmless.

It should mean treating its use as a matter of public policy and public health rather than relying primarily on prohibition and criminal enforcement.

People suffering from addiction should primarily have access to healthcare.

Addiction policy should include:

• prevention;
• harm reduction;
• treatment;
• psychological support;
• social support;
• reintegration.

Criminal law may still be necessary for violence, trafficking, exploitation, or other harmful conduct, but drug dependence itself should not be treated primarily as a moral failure.

Immigration is a normal and permanent feature of human societies.

It should be permitted, organised, and effectively administered rather than treated primarily as a security problem.

Immigration policy should combine:

• legal pathways;
• effective administration;
• reasonable controls;
• respect for fundamental rights;
• integration;
• access to employment;
• language education;
• protection against exploitation.

A functioning immigration system requires rules, but those rules should be designed to manage migration rather than criminalise migrants.

Immigration cannot be managed coherently by European countries acting in isolation.

The European Union should therefore develop a more coordinated immigration policy.

This should include:

• common legal pathways;
• coordinated asylum procedures;
• fair distribution of responsibilities;
• common external procedures;
• integration policy;
• labour protections;
• cooperation with countries of origin and transit.

European coordination should reduce both administrative chaos and competition between national systems.

The right to seek asylum should remain strongly protected.

Asylum procedures should be:

• rapid;
• properly staffed;
• individually assessed;
• legally reviewable;
• humane.

Long administrative delays are damaging both for applicants and for the institutions responsible for receiving them.

A serious asylum system should be capable of distinguishing efficiently between people who qualify for protection and those who do not while respecting fundamental rights throughout the process.

Integration should be understood primarily in civic terms.

A person's place in society should not depend on ethnicity, ancestry, or cultural conformity.

The important requirements are respect for the law, participation in civic life, and access to the linguistic and social tools required to function independently.

Public policy should therefore support:

• language learning;
• education;
• employment;
• administrative access;
• recognition of qualifications;
• civic participation.

Integration works better when people can actually participate in society.

Immigration policy should not create a workforce with fewer practical rights than other workers.

Employers who exploit undocumented or vulnerable workers should face strong sanctions.

Labour law, minimum standards, workplace safety, and wage protections should apply regardless of origin.

Otherwise restrictive immigration systems can unintentionally create a supply of workers who are easier to exploit.

Individuals should generally be free to organise their private lives according to their own values and preferences.

The state should intervene in private behaviour only when there is a sufficiently strong justification, particularly where behaviour causes significant harm to others.

Personal freedom should be the default.

Restriction should require justification.

This principle should apply even when a majority disapproves morally of the choices made by a minority.

The state should be strictly secular.

Public institutions should not privilege, promote, or discriminate against any religion.

At the same time, individuals should enjoy strong freedom of religion and freedom from religion.

Secularism should therefore protect both:

• the neutrality of the state;
• the liberty of individuals.

The personal religious beliefs of citizens are not the business of the state unless their exercise infringes the rights of others or conflicts with generally applicable law.

Housing is a basic social need.

It is unacceptable for people to remain homeless while usable housing remains vacant.

Public authorities should therefore guarantee emergency accommodation and develop sufficient long-term housing capacity.

Housing policy should include:

• social housing;
• public housing;
• emergency accommodation;
• renovation;
• mobilisation of vacant properties;
• support for vulnerable households;
• prevention of homelessness.

Housing policy should aim first to ensure that people have somewhere decent to live.

Homelessness should not be accepted as an unavoidable feature of society.

Emergency accommodation is necessary, but the objective should be permanent housing.

Public policy should combine housing with appropriate support for:

• healthcare;
• mental health;
• addiction;
• employment;
• administrative access;
• social services.

Leaving people on the street is neither socially acceptable nor an efficient use of public resources.

People with disabilities should be able to participate fully in society.

Accessibility should not be treated as an optional improvement.

Public infrastructure, transport, education, employment, digital services, and administrative systems should be designed to be accessible.

Public policy should support:

• autonomy;
• appropriate assistance;
• inclusive education where suitable;
• accessible housing;
• employment;
• mobility;
• accessible digital systems.

A society should adapt its infrastructure to human diversity rather than requiring every individual to fit an artificially narrow model.

Culture is a public good.

Libraries, museums, archives, music, theatre, cinema, literature, heritage, and other forms of cultural creation contribute to education, democratic life, and collective identity.

Public funding of culture is therefore legitimate.

Access should not depend exclusively on commercial profitability.

Libraries in particular should remain widely available public institutions providing access to:

• books;
• knowledge;
• digital resources;
• archives;
• cultural activities;
• public space.

Strong public services are sometimes presented as being opposed to individual freedom.

I reject that opposition.

A person who has access to healthcare, education, housing, unemployment protection, transport, and public infrastructure often has more practical freedom than someone who must accept any condition simply to avoid losing access to basic necessities.

Public institutions can become oppressive when they accumulate excessive power.

But well-designed public services can also provide the material conditions that make individual autonomy possible.

The objective of social policy should be a society in which people have both freedom and security.

This means:

• strong public services;
• equality of opportunity;
• accessible healthcare;
• high-quality education;
• housing;
• social protection;
• effective but accountable public security;
• humane justice;
• controlled and dignified immigration;
• broad personal liberty;
• secular public institutions;
• cultural access;
• inclusion.

Liberty, equality, and fraternity should not remain abstract constitutional words.

They should be visible in the institutions people depend on every day.