the essential
In a report published this Wednesday, the Court of Auditors recommends gradually eliminating 100,000 positions within local authorities by 2030. This would make nearly 4.1 billion euros in savings each year.
The Court of Auditors suggests a gradual elimination of 100,000 staff in local authorities, which employ around two million public agents, which would allow a “significant saving”, in a report devoted to local finances in 2024 made public this Wednesday 2 october. “A gradual return of community staff numbers to their level at the start of the 2010s, i.e. a reduction of 100,000 jobs or from 5.5% of jobswould make it possible to achieve a significant saving, estimated by the Court at 4.1 billion euros per year from 2030″, write the financial magistrates at a time when France’s public deficit is expected to exceed 6% of gross domestic product in 2024.
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“Personnel expenses, which represent a quarter of community expenses, are experiencing sustained growth, mainly driven by” municipalities and intercommunities, notes the Court, commissioned in March by former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to consider avenues savings within local communities. “While the workforce increased significantly until recently, despite the absence of new transfers of skills, controlling their development is a central issue,” she insists in a context where Prime Minister Michel Barnier wants to bring back the public deficit to 5% of GDP in 2025 and below 3% by 2029.
Fight against absenteeism
While Emmanuel Macron planned in 2017 to eliminate 120,000 positions in the public service (which employs a total of 5.7 million agents), he went back on his promise after the health crisis and is now content to want to stabilize the workforce.
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Among other avenues for savings, the Court is pushing for “an application wider legal working hours“of 1,607 annual hours in communities, which sometimes allows certain agents to work less hours to compensate for the arduousness of their job. “In 2022, the effective annual working time of territorial civil service agents was 1,564 hours on average”, she indicates. Resolving the 43 hours difference between the legal duration (1,607 hours) and the average working duration (1,564 hours) “would allow communities to reduce their workforce by 2.7 %, or 52,000 agents” for “an annual saving of nearly 1.3 billion euros”, details the financial jurisdiction.
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“The reduction of absenteeism would also contribute to reducing operating costs”, underlines the Court, a month after an administration report which suggested to the previous government to tighten compensation for civil servants on sick leave.
