State revenues were lower than expected in 2024, said the president (LFI) of the National Assembly’s finance committee, Eric Coquerel, on Thursday after a meeting with the outgoing Minister of Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave.
However, no quantified information was provided on this deficit. France has committed to the European Commission to reduce its public deficit from 5.5% of GDP in 2023 to 5.1% in 2024 and then to 4.1% in 2025.
The future government’s “reversible” budget project
Eric Coquerel and the rapporteur for the general budget Charles de Courson (LIOT) had given the government until September 2 to send them the “separate reprint” of the 2025 budget – giving an overview of the appropriations planned for each ministerial mission – and information on the execution of the 2024 budget. Thomas Cazenave spoke successively on Thursday with the two parliamentarians and promised to send them an unofficial document on Monday evening, but which would summarize the various letters on the ceiling sent by Matignon to each ministry in mid-August. part of a “reversible” budget project of the future government.
Eric Coquerel, still bitter about Emmanuel Macron’s “democratic denial” of Matignon’s NFP candidate Lucie Castets’ lack of consideration, said he “understands” that the resigning government “is waiting for a new government to transmit the project to the civil servants.”
The MPs also want to be informed about the completion of the first 10 billion euros of ministerial credit cancellations announced by Bercy in the spring. Thomas Cazenave promised the document “in September”. As for the other 10 billion euros, which were to be borne by the ministries (5 billion euros), by local authorities (2 billion euros) and by new taxes on rents for energy companies and share buybacks (3 billion euros in total), Thomas Cazenave is reported to have accepted that Bercy “no longer expects anything from the communities”, which never accepted this request. In compensation, the new freezes by the ministries have risen to 7 billion euros.
15 billion euros in savings for the State and 5 billion euros for Social Security in 2025
By 2025, the €20 billion in savings planned to reduce the public deficit to 4.1% of GDP, with a view to bringing it back below 3% in 2027, would be split between €15 billion for the State and the rest for Social Security. Matignon’s ceiling cards, by reproducing to the nearest euro for 2025 the expenditure of 2024 (€492 billion), would alone generate, according to Matignon, savings of around €10 billion, simply by not indexing to a predictable inflation of around 2% next year. The rest, according to Eric Coquerel, could come both from reductions in tax loopholes and from the reproduction in 2025 of additional revenues from share buybacks and annuities of energy companies.
The chairman of the finance committee estimated that, despite the tight deadlines, the new government could be “on the right track” to deliver the finance bill to Parliament on October 1, although he believes it will be difficult to really “put its touch” on the text in this time frame. For his part, he planned to convene a finance committee to “start work” at the end of the week of September 9, predicting that it will “deeply transform” the budget before the discussion of the text.
Source: BFM TV
