An austerity plan marked by high taxes on large groups and the wealthiest households, as planned, but also providing for an additional day of work for employees, a more limited increase than expected in employer contributions, and less efforts for local authorities… This is what the budget for 2025 could look like. At least if, as is likely, the final text comes close to the government version as the Senate began to amend it on Wednesday November 13.
After two years of deficit slippage, this budget will be “the one who finally marks the end of “whatever it takes”” and primer “a massive and unprecedented recovery” accounts, already promises the general rapporteur of the budget in the Senate, Jean-François Husson, elected Les Républicains (LR).
Forget the taxes created in recent weeks in the Assembly by tens of billions of euros, the spending revised upwards, as well as the elimination of funding for the European Union by France. This entire first version of the project, with amendments adopted piecemeal thanks to the left and sometimes the extreme right, was swept away by the overall negative vote of the National Assembly, on November 12, on the first part, concerning the recipes. Garbage can. A first under the Ve Republic.
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“A reversal of what is planned in our democracy”
On Wednesday, the senators meeting in the finance committee therefore started from the initial state budget project, while their colleagues specializing in social affairs worked on its counterpart on the Social Security side. Intense exchanges are planned with the government for a month. And it is from the version which will come out of the Senate in December that a compromise will have to be found in a joint committee with the deputies, before being submitted to the Assembly, undoubtedly using article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows adoption without a vote.
For once, “so this is where the budgets will be written”, note the senators. Some are delighted with this key role offered to them by the absence of any majority in the Assembly. The others, more critical: “It is an inversion of what is planned in our democracy, regrets the socialist Claude Raynal, president of the finance committee. Hopefully this won't happen again. »
With the right-wing senatorial majority supporting the new government, the 2025 budget as it stands should, in broad terms, remain close to the outline presented at the beginning of October by Michel Barnier. There is no question of changing the central objective, which consists of reducing the deficit from 6.1% of gross domestic product (GDP) expected in 2024 to 5% in 2025. A totem figure that the executive maintains no matter what, even if few experts believe such a decline is possible: “the step is probably too high”, Natixis analysts judged again on Wednesday, who are counting on 5.4%.
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