A public debt above €3.5 trillion sits in the same room as Thursday's summit, even if it will not be settled there. One reality is visible: candidates taking questions from business leaders on taxation, regulatory burdens, reindustrialisation, and the debt itself. The other is longer than a single appearance — a number that predates the coming campaign and will remain after the answers are delivered.
Paul's call to give thanks for everything seems to collide with that figure. Thanksgiving does not make the debt pleasant, erase past fiscal choices, or reveal which candidate's plan is wiser. But gratitude reframes the posture behind the promises. If everything has been received rather than owned, a candidate addressing the Medef summit is not just offering a pitch to consumers; they are answering for resources and obligations that belong to a trust older and wider than one election cycle.
That contrast does not turn the €3.5 trillion into an abstraction. It changes our own question. We can listen to economic pitches as stewards — asking what we are being asked to preserve, and for whom — rather than only as consumers asking what we will receive.