This Sunday, October 27, the government detailed 5 billion euros in additional savings aimed in particular at development aid, culture, support systems for the greening of vehicles and even sick leave in the public service.
These measures detailed by the Ministers of Budget and Public Service will be adopted through modifications to the 2025 finance bill and are part of the 60 billion euro effort decided in the budget to recover accounts and reduce the deficit to 5% of GDP .
According to the Minister of Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, in Le Parisien, the Government wishes, in particular, to extend from one to three days the waiting period in case of sick leave in the public service. And limit the first three months of ordinary sick leave to 90% of remuneration, compared to the current 100%.
“An alignment of rules between the public and private sectors”
“The government is working towards better alignment of rules between the public and private sector with 3-day waiting and 90% reimbursement for sick leave (instead of 100% for sick leave of 3 days to three). months)”, he explains.
“We will reduce expenses related to sick leave in the public service by 1.2 billion thanks to measures to combat absenteeism and better control of sick leave,” he added.
Of the desired 60 billion euros in savings, 20 billion come from tax increases and 40 billion from spending reductions, including 20 billion for the State.
Of these 20,000 million euros, 15,000 million were already reserved in the 2025 budget projects for the State and Social Security, but 5,000 million euros remained to be detailed.
More than half of these 5 billion additional savings, or 2.6 billion, come from the cancellation of a “significant” part of the precautionary reserve of almost all ministries and their operators.
The Ministries of Defense, Interior, Justice, Higher Education and Overseas Territories will not be affected.
The distribution of the savings will be known in the coming days
Details of how ministries will distribute these savings will be known in the coming days, when the government presents the amendments.
Added to this is a block of one billion euros of “specific savings” in public policies, including a reduction of 640 million euros for development aid, a reduction of 55 million for culture, in particular public audiovisual and reorientation of the Culture Pass, and 300 million euros reduction in support systems for the greening of vehicles.
Regarding this last point, the allocation increases to 700 million euros instead of 1,000 million, “specifying that these 700 million euros will be complemented with aid through energy savings certificates,” the offices specified.
Regarding development aid, this new cut is added to the reduction already planned in the 2025 budget project, of 21% compared to the amount voted the previous year, that is, 1,300 million euros less.
“The 2025 credits are still 1,200 million euros higher than those of 2017, so it is not a matter of giving up an ambition but rather a reduction in its scope,” says the ministry.
Finally, a final pocket of around 300 million additional savings will be taken from the cash flow of some surplus operators, namely the water agencies, the National Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI) and the Infrastructure Financing Agency of Transportation (Afit).
Source: BFM TV