Who is responsible for the slippage in public finances? This is the question that the members of the Senate Finance Committee who have launched an information mission, with a series of hearings of former ministers, will try to answer. They began on Thursday, November 7, with Bruno Le Maire, former Minister of the Economy for seven years, who left Bercy on September 21, leaving behind a public deficit that was much more serious than announced. In 2024, the deficit of the State, local authorities and Social Security was initially expected to fall to 4.4% of gross domestic product (GDP). It actually risks reaching 6.1% of GDP. That is a gap equivalent to more than 50 billion euros. So what happened?
Before the senators, Bruno Le Maire refuted any concealment, nor “will to deceive” on the public accounts. There was “a serious technical error in the evaluation of revenue for which we are paying the price,” affirmed the former boss of Bercy, ensuring that from the moment he found out he was alerted, proposed and carried out the necessary corrections: freezing and cancellation of credits, increase in electricity rates, etc… But when in the spring he demanded a collective budget, namely a corrective law, for 15 billion euros in additional savings, he encountered the refusal of Emmanuel Macron and Gabriel Attal. The former Minister of the Economy also accused the. Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, for not having taken the necessary decisions since his arrival at Matignon “If all the measures that we had prepared with Thomas Cazenave had been implemented without delay (…) they would have made it possible to contain the deficit for. 2024 at 5.5% without tax increase” affirmed Bruno Le Maire.
Hearing this Friday, former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal defended his Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, deeming the “political and media trial” against him “scandalous” and welcoming his “obsession with getting France out of debt”. He also claimed to have made “strong decisions” when he was at Matignon to stem the budget’s slippage. However, his statements did not convince the Senate Finance Committee any more than Bruno Le Maire and Thomas Cazenave. Thus Jean-François Husson, the general rapporteur of the budget in the Senate, did not adhere to the version of the former Prime Minister, pointing the finger at a series of announcements on “new expenditure” for “agriculture”, “health”, on “emergency aid for the organic sector”, “the payment of the energy check”, “on Ukraine”… “It’s going completely to waste,” he said. When there has a gap of 50 billion in 9 months, it is a form of indigence and a lack of rigor in the keeping of our accounts.
The hearings will continue in the Senate but also in the National Assembly where the finance committee will also change, for a time, in size and investigate for several weeks on “the causes” of “the variation” and “deviations from forecasts fiscal and budgetary”. At the same time in the hemicycle, the deputies continue the examination of the 2025 Budget, which plans to reduce the public deficit to 5% of GDP, while several lights are red for the French economy and bad news is increasing on the front of employment. Thus the Auchan and Michelin groups have both just announced particularly important social plans. The French tire giant has in fact informed its employees of the closure before 2026 of its sites in Cholet and Vannes (Morbihan), which have a total of 1,254 employees. As for Auchan, no less than 2,400 jobs are threatened, while at the start of 2024, the group was talking about buying several dozen Casino stores. At the same time, the National Council of Judicial Administrators and Judicial Agents indicates that “the volume of insolvencies should probably reach the threshold of 65,000 companies at the end of 2024, which represents a significant peak”. 150,000 jobs would be threatened in the short and medium term, particularly in the housing and industrial sectors.
In this economic climate, some nevertheless manage to do well. This is particularly the case of the company “La Brosserie Française” which produces toothbrushes. Located in Beauvais, in the Oise, it almost disappeared in 2012, in the face of Asian competition. It was then that a former employee decided to take it over by making things made in France. Report this evening.
The experts:
– Emmanuel DUTEIL – Editorial Director – The New Factory
– Gaëlle MACKE – Deputy Editorial Director – Challenges
– Fanny GUINOCHET – Economic columnist – France Info et The Tribune
– Brigitte BOUCHER – Political journalist at Franceinfo TV
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