Approximately one month since the presentation of the main orientations of the 2026 budget, the Government remains vague on the roads planned to save the 40 billion euros needed to reduce the public deficit to 4.6% of GDP. Only he only throws some test balls repeating that nothing is excluded at this stage.
Among the recently mentioned measures, some return us a few years. Proven more or less successful, they had the same objective every time: generate savings in a context of degraded public finances.
If these advanced tracks have emerged in recent weeks, it is because the reduction of public spending becomes an emergency for the Executive. After 2017 opened, a budget amplitude period marked the “Yellow Chass” episode, the health crisis and then the inflationary impulse. But with the excavation of deficits at record levels (excluding the crisis), the government’s priority becomes the decrease in public spending.
General description of the different explored clues.
• Reduction in the number of officials
“No taboo” for Public Accounts Minister Amélie de Montchalin, the track of a reduction in the number of public officials returns to the table. An age taken by several governments in the last 30 years.
Already in 1997, former National Minister of Education Claude Allègre marked the spirits with his famous expression: “It is necessary to defect the gigantic.” However, since that date, public service personnel have increased by 23%. Closer to us, Nicolas Sarkozy had certainly managed to eliminate 136,000 positions in the state civil service between 2007 and 2012, according to the site Felpeco. However, the number of public officials on all combined sides had increased by 17,000 during the period.
The promise to eliminate positions in the public service was back in the heart of the debates during the presidential elections, between François Fillon, who pointed to 500,000 positions and Emmanuel Macron 120,000. The winning candidate finally said he was ready in 2019 to give up his commitment if it was “it was not sustainable.” In fact, public employment increased by 178,000 jobs during its first term, including 96,000 in the state public service, 45,000 in local authorities and 38,000 in hospitals.
• The abolition of tax niches
Another sea snake taken by the Bayroun government: the abolition of ineffective tax niches. Before him, François Hollande as Nicolas Sarkozy had promised to address him during his mandate. A promise to more than mixed results knowing that the cost of these devices has continued to increase in recent years to reach 85 billion.
The number of niches fluctuated around 400 in the early 2000s to more than 500 at the end of the 2010 before falling to 450 in 2017 and then returning to 474 today. Undoubtedly, the illustration of the tax experts saying, according to which “in each niche, there is a scathing dog.”
• The establishment of a social VAT
In terms of taxes, the Government has not excluded or establish social VAT to make consumption more despite social security financing through an increase in VAT in exchange for a work of lighting at work. A measure on which France already debated “thirty years ago,” Business François Ecalle, an expert in public finance, recalled Business.
The social VAT was even established for experimentation by Nicolas Sarkozy at the end of his mandate in 2012. It is supposed to enter into force in October of the same year, he was finally repealed by the deputies shortly after the election of François Hollande and, therefore, never saw the light of the day.
• The rationalization of state operators
The Government has promised to merge or suppress by the end of the year a third of the agencies and operators of the State “that are not universities”. Enough to generate “savings of 2 to 3 tickets.”
A third of state agencies and operators “that are not universities” will be merged or abolished by the end of the year, announce this Sunday at CNEWS/Europe 1, Amélie de Montchalin, Minister of Public Accounts.
In the past, the successive governments have already “expressed on several occasions their desire to limit the number of state operators,” the auditing court observed in 2021. Therefore, “their number decreased by 25% during the 2010-2020 period, largely under the effect of groups.” Since then, it has been relatively stable, around 435.
Since the beginning of the year, several attempts to call in doubt certain operators have already taken place at the initiative of parliamentarians, particularly within the framework of the Simplification Law.
In the viewfinder of elected officials in recent months: the Organic Agency, the French Biodiversity Office, The National Commission of Public Debate, the Regional Social and Environmental Economic Councils, the Board of Construction and Effective Energy, the National Mountain Council, the French initiative for coral reefs. However, none has been officially eliminated at this stage.
Source: BFM TV
