Budget 2024, public finance programming law and real or supposed ambitions for the 2027 presidential elections… The Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, returns to the field on Thursday in Haute-Savoie. Before employees and local economic actors, the number two in the Government will present “its road map for the coming months,” according to Bercy.
A return to the political scene that comes a month before the closure of a delicate budget. Bruno Le Maire and his new Delegate Minister for Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave, must present the finance bill for 2024 by the end of September. However, with expected growth of around 1% in 2023, against 2.5 % in 2022 and 6.4% in 2021 – tax revenue less dynamic than in 2022 and a public debt of more than 3,000 trillion euros, the equation promises to be difficult to solve.
Much to the chagrin of employers, the Government was able to extend the total suppression of the business value added contribution (CVAE), initially announced for 2024. Halved in 2023, this production tax had contributed more than 9,600 million to the State of euros. and local authorities in 2022. The government could also postpone the two billion euro tax cut for households, outlined in the spring by Emmanuel Macron.
Elimination of tax loopholes
Despite the Executive’s hostility to tax increases, the elimination of unfavorable tax loopholes for the environment is being studied, as well as the increase in the taxation of motorway companies and plane tickets. As for spending, Bruno Le Maire intends to cut more than a billion euros from state subsidies to his operators such as the CNRS or Pôle emploi. The “Pinel” system, which allows individuals to benefit from tax breaks when buying rental housing, should disappear and redirect the loan to a zero rate, for an estimated saving of two billion euros in the long term.
Other saving measures such as the suppression of reductions in employer contributions for salaries between 2.5 and 3.5 Smic, recommended by the Renaissance deputy Marc Ferracci, or the reform of the daily allowances paid by the Health Insurance could be included in the Social Security Financing Bill (PLFSS), which will also be introduced at the end of September.
financial track record
This is the text that materializes the French ambition to bring the public deficit below the European threshold of 3% of GDP in 2027: the public finance programming law (LPFP), challenged by deputies at the end of 2022, must return to Parliament. The LPFP details, for each year between 2023 and 2027, the targets for reducing the deficit and public debt set by Paris.
A payment of 11,000 million euros has already been suspended by Brussels this summer and another of 8,000 million will be at the end of the year if the law is not approved, according to him. It remains for this law to be adopted by a National Assembly where the government can only count on a relative majority. To avoid wasting a precious 49-3, the government should convene a short extraordinary session of parliament at the end of September, with the specific intention of boosting the PSSA, before the start of the regular session in October.
Presidential in sight
The next presidential election is only scheduled for 2027, but Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has already launched the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron in mid-August. “What worries me now is what will happen in 2027,” launched Figaro, the restless forty-year-old, supported by former president Nicolás Sarkozy in his Elysian ambitions.
Although presidential ambitions are regularly attributed to him, will Bruno Le Maire remain insensitive to this offensive by a minister who reported to him when he was in charge of Public Accounts, from 2017 to 2020? “The 2027 presidential elections, I’m not thinking about that,” the Economy Minister still assured the weekly Paris-Match at the beginning of August, without truncating the speculation.
Source: BFM TV
