What is this method of “BBZ” in Vogue in American companies whose government wants to inspire to save money?

Decreed by Economy Minister Éric Lombard, the “Budget Emergency” “will push the Government to revolutionize its practices to develop the 2026 budget? According to Le Monde, Bercy plans to inspire the “BBZ” method, for the “Zero Base Budget”, while the Executive launched in search of 40 billion euros in savings to respect the deficit target at 4.6% of GDP next year.

As the name implies, the “Zero Base Budget” consists in building a budget without taking into account the budgets of previous years and, therefore, without the automatic renewal of expenses. Each of the expenses is checked precisely.

“We resume the analysis of the needs, we observe the effectiveness of the way we meet these needs. (…) It is about avoiding the effects of inertia,” adds the economist.

Imagined by Pete Pyhrr, Texas Instruments manager, the “BBZ” method was first established in the Dallas business in the 1960s before being approached in the public by Jimmy Carter in 1973, when he was governor of Georgia, then as president of the United States since 1976 as part of the law in the reform of the economy and public spending.

“It is obvious that such an exam is necessary at the federal level. It would allow the government to reduce spending eliminating unnecessary programs. It would guarantee the population that the funds are protected against unnecessary and ineffective programs,” the Democrat justified.

“Some expenses are no longer justified”

Coca-Cola, Unilever, Mondelez … In recent years, several companies have adopted the “BBZ” method to drastically reduce their costs. More recently, this is what Elon Musk did after his purchase of Twitter, who became X.

It is this in -depth review of the expenses inspired by the “BBZ” that the Government seems to be implementing: “Lucidity requires that we see that certain expenses are no longer justified,” said Amélie de Montchalin on Tuesday. For the Minister of Public Accounts, “sometimes we have become a window state, a state that distributes.” He asked “to rename the State in its ability to plan and act effectively instead of being in automatic subsidies, controls, measures that have sometimes lost their relevance.”

But is it possible to apply the “BBZ” method when it comes to developing France’s budget? In fact, it is a particularly heavy job: “It is a theoretically difficult and politically very dangerous exercise,” said Amélie de Montchalin, according to Le Monde. But the idea is to “reexamine” every expense and “ask: in 2025, in 2026, what are our priorities?” The minister added.