LThe government published a decree on February 21 canceling 10 billion euros in credits in its 2024 budget in order to contain the public deficit. The 2024 finance law already recorded a reduction of 16 billion compared to that of 2023. Twenty billion additional savings are announced for 2025.
As heads of learned societies, we warn of the arbitrary nature of these choices which hamper our future and will likely prove ineffective, while other strategies are possible.
The ecological transition is the first victim, with 2.1 billion euros in cuts. Added to this is the reduction of 400 million in allocations to the green fund financing the ecological transition of the territories. However, the Pisani-Ferry report-Mahfouz of May 2023 estimated the additional public funding needed to succeed in this transition at 32 billion euros per year.
In the average
Teaching and research, despite chronic underinvestment, will also be cut by 700 and 900 million respectively. The sectors are therefore sacrificed the most crucial to prepare for the future and face ecological and climate emergencies. These cuts also reinforce a strong trend of reduction in resources allocated to public services despite the increase in collective needs such as the massification of higher education, the aging of the population, the increase in health expenditure or the necessary adaptation housing.
This short-sighted budgetary austerity has no solid scientific basis. According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), advanced economies had, in 2022, an average public debt of 112.5% of their gross domestic product (GDP).
France, on average with 112.5%, remains solvent and finances itself without difficulty: its debt, like that of Japan, much higher (261%), is considered high quality. The trajectory of the debt in no way requires such public disinvestment, especially since public debt is not just a liability: it builds assets (infrastructure, participations, etc.) whose value, according to INSEE (145% of GDP), is well above the liability.
Benefits greater than costs
The increase in debt for the construction of assets is all the more justified in the context of the fight against climate change, for which the cost of anticipation is much lower than the cost of inaction. As evidenced by the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investing for the latter leads to economic benefits greater than the costs generated, all the more so as this investment begins early. For this it is necessary invest in research across all disciplines. THE 2024 report from the Court of Auditors underlines “ [qu’]given the growing need for expertise in the field of adaptation, scientific pools remain undersized”.
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