When it comes to budgeting, it’s all about semantics. “I’m always looking for the right adjective”to describe the situation of public accounts, admits the president of the Court of Auditors, Pierre Moscovici. “I’m going to stick with the one I’ve been using for the last few months, which is ‘concerning’. But I’m actually tempted to say that we’re a little beyond that. We are really in the imperative for action, for me the situation is serious. »
This year, more than in previous years, the institution is particularly harsh on the government and its management of public accounts in its annual report made public on Tuesday March 12, most of which is devoted to adapting to the transition. climatic. His diagnosis is even more so “in the light of the analyzes and information we now have, on the means we will need to mobilize to adapt to climate change”he continues.
Despite the truth operation on the accounts carried out by Bercy on February 18, during which the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, reduced his growth forecast for 2024 from 1.4% to 1% and announced 10 billion euros of additional savings, the ministry’s assumptions concerning growth, inflation, tax revenues and the public deficit are still considered very “optimistic” by the Court, both for the year 2024 and for subsequent years.
The growth forecast of 1% in particular remains high, knowing that the consensus of economists is around 0.7%, notes the report. As for the promised savings, they are little identified at this stage. Pierre Moscovici pleads for them to target as a priority “lower quality spending”. “The plane means less money for the economy”, he said. Matignon has also ordered three reports from the Court to feed into the review of public expenditure initiated by the government: on the participation of local authorities in the recovery of accounts, on the exit from the Covid-19 and energy crisis measures – the latter have cost nearly 260 billion euros of public money since 2020, calculated the Court – and on the regulation of Health Insurance expenditure.
“50 billion euros in new savings”
In the meantime, uncertainties continue to weigh on the year 2024, underlines the report, starting with the forecasts of tax revenues. These were lower than expected in 2023, with an unexpected slowdown in corporate tax yield that Bercy struggles to explain. Public spending also remains higher than before the health crisis, and will continue to increase under the combined effect of the increase in interest rates, the index revaluations of civil servants and the weight of the various laws of programming (on defense, justice, interior, research). The latter have multiplied in recent years, they now cover 20% of the scope of State expenditure, and up to 31% in 2027.
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