The outgoing government or the next one will have to present a draft budget for 2025 by the deadline, October 1, two senators warned on Wednesday, deploring the “catastrophic” situation of France’s public accounts.
“It seems to me imperative that the budgetary procedure provided for by the Constitution and by the organic law relating to finance laws be respected,” declared Claude Raynal, president of the Senate finance committee, during a press conference.
“The country’s budgetary situation is now critical enough to add uncertainty to the uncertainty” created by the post-legislative political paralysis, he stressed.
The Finance Bill (PLF) must be submitted to Parliament no later than the first Tuesday in October, i.e. October 1 this year. The law must be published before the following January 1.
This deadline also applies to the next government, according to Claude Raynal. “The Prime Minister who will be appointed will have a few days to say what he wants to do, and give some major signals,” he added, recalling that Parliament then had 70 days to debate the PLF.
At their request, the Ministry of Economy and Finance communicated budget documents to parliamentarians on Monday indicating a possible new slippage to 5.6% of the public deficit in 2024 (against 5.1%), attributing it to an unexpected surge in local authority spending and disappointing tax revenues. The deficit could reach 6.2% in 2025 with unchanged policy.
“We are therefore approaching, without any objective reason, without any external reason, without a crisis, the deficit levels that we experienced during the health crisis, this is unacceptable,” said the general rapporteur of the Senate Finance Committee, Jean-François Husson, describing the government’s budgetary policy as “catastrophic”.
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After a deficit drift in 2023, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire “told us that the budgetary situation was under control”, speaking of an “exceptional event”, noted Mr. Husson. However, “it is exactly the same thing that is happening for 2024”, he deplored.
“I think that the trajectory presented by the government was misleading,” he said, deploring, like his colleague, a lack of transparency.
The resigning Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave, dismissed these accusations on Wednesday to AFP. “We have been irreproachable with Parliament. We have provided all the requested elements on time and have even gone beyond the requests of the parliamentarians. At this stage of preparation of the PLF, Parliament has never had so many preparatory documents,” he assured.
mpa/jbo/spi
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