According to the High Council, an independent body attached to the Court of Auditors, the government has “overrated» the impact of all the reforms it plans to implement.
The High Council of Public Finances (HCFP) judges “unambitious» the trajectory set by the government to reduce the public deficit by 2027, in an opinion issued on Sunday on the eve of the presentation of the 2023 draft budget. The trajectory by which the government intends to reduce this deficit from 5% of GDP at 2.9% over the duration of the five-year term is also estimated “particularly fragile“by the HCFP, which considers its assumptions to be overly optimistic”on economic growth, on the control of public spending and on the increase in compulsory levies“.
Read alsoWith Gabriel Attal, behind the scenes of the preparation of the 2023 budget
According to the High Council, an independent body attached to the Court of Auditors, the government has “overrated“the impact of all the reforms it plans to implement, namely pensions, unemployment insurance, active solidarity income (RSA) and apprenticeship, “especially in the early years of programming“. He specifies that for all these reforms, “neither the methods, nor the impacts, nor the timetable are documented“. For retreats in particular,the resulting savings would in any case be limited to the horizon of the programming period“.
Read alsoPension reform: the 30 billion hidden deficit of civil servants
The pension reform is not contained in the social security financing bill, according to the text consulted on Sunday by AFP. The reform could be initiated by way of amendment during the parliamentary debate, or by a dedicated text, said Sunday the Minister for Relations with Parliament, Franck Riester. This text provides for a sharp decline in Social Security deficit next year, to 6.8 billion euros, against 17.8 billion in 2022.
SEE ALSO – Unemployment insurance: “For the moment, some of the articles are consensual”, underlines Dinah Cohen
According to the High Council, the public finance programming bill for the five-year term, which the government must present Monday at the same time as its budget for the year 2023, “does not register a rapid return to the objective of balancing public finances, to which France is committed” at the European level. France is now one of the seven countries in the euro zone whose public debt is higher than the gross domestic product (GDP), while it is less than 80% of GDP for 11 of them, notes the HCFP, according to which even if the trajectory proposed by the government is respected, “France will continue to see its relative debt position deterioratewithin the euro zone.
Read alsoPension reform: tension rises a notch around the head of state
In its separate opinion for 2023 alone, the HCFP considers the government’s 1% growth forecast “a bit high“. While revenues are likely to suffer next year from weaker than expected activity, they will be up thanks to higher tax receipts than had been anticipated in 2022. Public spending should fall by 1.1% once deducted inflation, but “the deficit could ultimately be larger than expected due to the underestimation of certain expenses“. Finally, the public deficit forecast of 5% of GDP next year “is marked by the great uncertainty surrounding macroeconomic developments and in particular energy prices“.
SEE ALSO – “We are the country with one of the highest public deficits”, regrets Agnès Verdier-Molinié