Pmore than seven years of economic policy conducted under the sign of “redress” and some “reconquest of sovereignty” will not have overcome the French addiction to debt. The charge sounded Tuesday March 12 by the first president of the Court of Auditors, Pierre Moscovici, who was also François Hollande’s minister of the economy between 2012 and 2014, follows a few weeks the publication of a decree urgently canceling 10 billion euros of budgetary appropriations. The ax fell less than two months after the adoption in Parliament of the 2024 draft budget.
It’s not yet panic, but the situation is “serious”, “concerning”, to use the words of the magistrate of Rue Cambon, who did not shun the media to sound the olifant: in five years, the public debt has jumped by 800 billion euros to reach 3,210 billion euros, or more than 110% of national wealth. Interest reimbursement, which represented an annual expenditure of 20 billion euros in the state budget, rose to 54 billion euros in 2023 and could rise to 87 billion euros in three years. It is time to stop the costs if France wants to keep control of its spending and not lose face in its European negotiations: it is today among the most indebted countries in the euro zone and among those which have been the least quick to reduce their deficits.
Very good reasons explain the runaway that has occurred since 2017 and the climate of carelessness that accompanied the movement: until the reversal of monetary policy in 2022, money cost almost nothing while the needs of funding were enormous. Police, justice, army, national education, health, suddenly, the dilapidation of public services, left in a state of worrying underinvestment during previous decades, was evident, becoming an aggravating factor in the democratic crisis . It was imperative to refloat them.
Change of budget era
The Covid-19 epidemic has made the State the savior of the French economy, while the ecological transition and industrial rearmament have required great needs. However, more than elsewhere, “whatever it takes”, which has blended into the mold of the protective State, has become a reflex, not to say a drug, accepted as such on all benches. politicians, from the extreme left to the extreme right. Example among others, the energy shield, activated in 2022 and reissued in 2023 to cushion the surge in gas and electricity prices, cost the French State 36 billion euros. France was the only European country to commit public funds at such a level to preserve purchasing power, even though the debt burden was once again becoming a subject of concern.
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