Three days after the publication of the annual report of the Court of Auditors, very critical of the slowness of the government to straighten out public finances, Gabriel Attal “assumed” on Monday “not to do brutal austerity”.
“It is the role of the Court of Auditors to alert us and to push us to go ever further in the restoration of public finances”, argued the Minister of Public Accounts on France Inter.
While the deficit should reach 5% of GDP in 2022 and the debt more than 110%, “we assume that we must restore our public finances and we assume not to do it in a brutal way”, he continued. . “We saw what it gave” after the economic and financial crisis of the end of the 2000s: “more unemployment, more taxes and more debt”.
“The deficit was 9% in 2020, in 2021 we reduced it to 6.5%. We will bring it back below 3% in 2027, we have met all the objectives we had set”, s gabriel Attal is defended in the face of criticism from the Court of Auditors which considers the trajectory of consolidation of public accounts to be “unambitious”.
“Our objective is to stabilize the public debt in 2026, and to start repaying it in 2027”. We assume not to do brutal austerity”, he concluded, while acknowledging that it was necessary to “better target” the support systems for the economy and households, as recommended by the Court.
Asked about the advisability of a tax increase for the wealthiest taxpayers, Gabriel Attal insisted that France was “a tax haven for no one”.
“On the taxation of capital, of the wealthiest, we have absolutely nothing to envy our neighbors, we tax them more than them,” he assured. “We have the second rate of compulsory levies of the 38 OECD countries, we are on the job in terms of taxes,” he insisted.
Invited by Franceinfo, the Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire for his part promised “several billion euros in public spending savings” in the draft budget for 2024, which must be presented in September.
“Today we have 57% of public expenditure in our national wealth, I want to reduce this figure to 54% by 2027, to get closer to the European average which is 52%”, he detailed.