“After spreading misery, here is the organization of ignorance.” Shortly after the publication of the 2025 finance bill (PLF), Jean-Luc Mélenchon focused on one measure in particular. That of “4,000 fewer positions in Education”. “This budget is a calamity,” writes about X the rebellious leader, adept at diatribes. He is far from being the only one. This elimination of positions, mainly in nursery and elementary schools, justified by a future drop in the number of students, is at the center of the anger of the political and union world. And this, even if 2,000 positions for supporting students with disabilities (AESH) will be created in order to adjust the balance.
“A real bloodletting”, denounces on X Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of SNES-FSU. She adds: “National Education is the biggest contributor to job cuts. No new salary measures for 2025. Michel Barnier sacrifices public schools. Unworthy and irresponsible!” “A scandal! The school is at a tipping point, Michel Barnier is throwing it into the void. completes a press release from the union.
Environmentalists joined in the collective grumbling. “We have the busiest classes in Europe. Students are neither nuts nor bolts. believes MP Arnaud Bonnet, as well as his Marseille comrade Hendrik Davi, who speaks of a “sacrificed education”. Same story with Lisa Belluco, who sees in this elimination of positions a “desire to destroy public schools, to the detriment of our children and the suffering staff of national education”.
“The budget [plus] austerity of our history”
“Our budget is a budget of responsibility, seriousness and ambition,” However, the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, assured in the evening during the presentation of the PLF. A “recovery effort” public accounts which amounts to 60 billion euros. The analysis is not to everyone’s taste. The rebellious MEP Manon Aubry does the math: “Rise in the price of electricity [et] mutual insurance, reduction in retirement pensions… the bill will be heavy for the poorest and the middle classes”. She denounces a budget made “to preserve the interests of [plus] riches dont the tax increase is a sham”. In short, according to her, “the budget [plus] austerity of our history.
His rebellious comrade Louis Boyard also listed the savings made by the government in this PLF. And assures that “Rebellious France will fight to prevent Barnier’s illegitimate government from robbing the people!” On the socialist side, young people are speaking out. “We have summarized the 2025 budget for you and as we expected: the breakdown of our public services continues,” they write on X.
Anticipating, the NFP leaders had made a counter-program a little earlier in the week. Ten tax measures, resulting from the legislative election program, which would, according to them, increase state and social security revenue.
“Optimistic, poorly documented, fragile”
On the side of the extreme right, the former leader Nicolas Dupont-Aignan speaks of a budget which will “racket the French even more, and in particular the retirees who are sacrificed, without tackling the great waste”. “More than ever, censorship is essential…” he slips, while his RN allies do not (yet) hear it that way.
The communities, also involved, are expressing their dissatisfaction. In a column published by West France during the day, 44 elected officials from large cities and metropolises, from Brest to Strasbourg via Marseille, Lyon or Lille, denounced “attacks coming from the central state […] unacceptable”. On “threaten the ability of cities to build the future” and could “greatly affect the quality of public services”.
The finance bill was also judged «fragile», not by the oppositions but by the High Council of Public Finances (HCFP), in an opinion delivered this Thursday, October 10 before the presentation of the budget. “The forecasts remain a little optimistic and the information is poorly documented, and therefore the results on revenues and expenditures are fragile”affirmed its president Pierre Moscovici. The senior official believes that the French budgetary effort will in reality be based on tax increases and not on a reduction in spending as the government had promised.
