The debate on the finance bill for 2024 in Parliament is not yet over – it must be examined at the end of November in the Senate – as the executive is already looking at the text for 2025. More precisely, on the budgetary savings which will allow to achieve the objective of 3.7% public deficit expected in two years. Thursday, November 16 in the evening, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, brought together around twenty ministers at Matignon, in order to launch a review of public spending, an exercise that feels like déjà vu but which, this year, comes particularly early.
This is because, for the government, the political message to be conveyed is pressing. Public debt exceeded 3,000 billion euros in the first quarter, interest rates are soaring. And the rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P), which already applies a negative outlook to the French debt and had warned, in June, of “risks” relating to the execution of the budgetary objectives of the Borne government, must deliver an opinion on 1er December. “We had planned to launch this project before the end of the year anyway, but with S&P, it’s not useless”we euphemize in the entourage of the head of government.
To get below the 3% deficit and reduce public debt by 2027, Emmanuel Macron’s campaign promises in 2022, Bercy must find 12 billion euros in lasting savings, i.e. capable of being renewed from year to year, from 2024. A figure known since the presentation, at the end of September, of the public finance programming law, definitively adopted on Wednesday November 15.
“Normalize public spending”
This review of expenditure, carried out by the various administrative inspections (IGF, IGAS, etc.) under the leadership of the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, and his counterpart delegated to the budget, Thomas Cazenave, should make it possible to scrutinize “spending efficiency” public policies. “We protected the French a lot during Covid and the energy crisis. It is time to normalize public spending and find financial room for maneuver to preserve our sovereignty”we argue at Matignon. “It’s not a question of cutting corners but of better targeting, reallocating, refining the quality of public spending”we still assure.
A first review of expenditures had already been carried out at the start of the year, with a view to the 2024 finance bill, with meager results. Of the 16 billion euros in budget savings currently under discussion, 14 billion come from the cessation of one-off measures: these are emergency measures linked to previous crises, such as the tariff shield, and not discounts based on public policies. Several proposals from the parliamentary majority aimed at reducing certain poorly targeted tax loopholes (research tax credit, apprenticeship aid for the most qualified) were even rejected by the executive power.
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