The motion of censure in Michel Barnier's government was adopted this Wednesday, November 4, 2024, in the evening at the National Assembly. Direct consequences of this vote: the social security financing bill was not adopted, nor was the finance bill for 2025 in its entirety. Enough to directly impact the functioning of businesses. In Haute-Garonne, 45 minutes south of Toulouse, Delphine Balerdi has been director of a private clinic in Verdaich for around ten years. A clinic which employs 220 employees and generates an annual turnover of 19 million euros, but its director says “very very worried” for the coming year.
“I don’t know if I can balance the expenses”
“It is the State which today sets my financial resources for me, via a spending objective, indicates Delphine Balerdi. And this spending objective will not take into account the effects that we may have had regarding inflation over the last two years, as well as the possibility of seeing an adapted salary increase for our employees. I have roughly tripled the amount of the energy budget between 2022 and 2024. My prices have increased by 1% since 2020. The margins that we generate were already not very significant, and they are not going to allow us today to take charge of all these increases linked to inflation. I don't know if I will be able to balance today the expenses I have incurred to take care of the patients entrusted to us during the year 2024.”
Mathieu Dumas is general director of the Crespy Group, a construction company which works in Toulouse, Revel and Carcassonne and specializes in building renovation. This company employs 90 people, but its manager must already make vital choices to keep it alive. “Over the last two or three years, we had 40 to 50 temporary workers. For the next six months, I only have two temporary workers and then I have none at all for the last six months of 2025, because I no longer have a job today, so all the temporary workers will find themselves unemployed.”
“A vision over 6 months, compared to usually one year”
“I manage to preserve my employees for the next six months and two or three years ago, I had a vision of around a year of order backlog. Today, it is only six monthsdeplores Mathieu Dumas. So this will represent approximately a 30% drop in my turnover. The longer the government takes to decide, the longer the crisis will last. There, it will last several quarters, even semesters and perhaps it will last more than a year. If the situation drags on for six more months, the crisis will be even harsher, with even more failures and unemployed employees.warns the manager.
Mathieu Dumas also specifies that in 2024, the situation was already difficult, with barely 250,000 housing construction starts compared to 360,000 launched in 2023. 2025 is coming “even worse”according to the boss of the Crespy Group.
