Michel Barnier said this Tuesday that he hopes that a commission of inquiry will tell “the truth” about the budgetary slippage, while the principle of transforming the Finance Committee into a commission of inquiry on this matter must be recorded next week .
“We have poorly managed the end of the crisis” of Covid and inflation, “and the reality today is this. Moreover, you recently proposed a commission of inquiry which will have to determine the figures, the facts, the truth and tell it to the French”, declared the Prime Minister before the National Assembly, in response to a question from MP Éric Ciotti, president of the Union of Rights for the Republic (UDR) group, an ally of the National Rally (RN ).
A responsible budget project
“Stop giving us lessons and I always listen to them attentively (…) provided that we stick to the facts, the figures, the truth,” he also told Éric Ciotti who accused him of having “become the dream prime minister of the New Popular Front” because of the tax increases planned to make up the deficit. Michel Barnier said he had defended a “responsible” draft budget for 2025 including 60 billion euros in savings, including 40 billion in spending reductions and 20 billion in tax increases.
“If we let this debt slip away, and the crisis that will go with it, we will lose our sovereignty,” he warned. “The government does not want and will never accept that the future of our children is decided in Washington, New York or Beijing,” he added.
Éric Ciotti announced last week his wish to use his group’s “drawing right” to create a commission of inquiry into the “derivance of public finances”. Then the president of the Finance Committee Eric Coquerel (LFI) announced his intention to request investigative powers for this “ComFi” on the same subject. On Tuesday, the Conference of Presidents of the National Assembly decided to “join the two commissions of inquiry”.
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