The Upper House votes this Thursday on a budget at its lowest. The Minister responsible for Public Accounts, Amélie de Montchalin, aims “a reduction in the state budget of 2% in volume compared to that of 2024”. Never seen before. The finance bill that the senators will approve is even more austerity than the one presented by Michel Barnier before his fall. To carry out its turn of the screw, the government of François Bayrou is going hussar. The train of amendments is moving at a speed previously unknown in the Senate.
“The executive submits amendments without warning until the last moment”, alarms PCF senator Pascal Savoldelli. The budget is subject to a “turbo-rabot”also observes elected official LR Olivier Paccaud, as billions of budgets go up in smoke at lightning speed. The amendment removing 500 million euros from the France 2030 mission (which aims to reindustrialize the country) “arrived at 11:36 p.m. for an exam that started at 10 a.m. the next day. So much so that we were unable to assess the impact, contact the operators,” deplores the ecologist Thomas Dossus.
“We only touch the expenses”
Because rather than presenting a new budget, François Bayrou opted for a rapid transformation of that of Michel Barnier. Problem: it is impossible in this context to debate new state revenues. To reach the 5.4% deficit in relation to GDP, the executive is therefore only proposing cuts in public spending. Like a litany, and without substantive political discussion, the amendments are justified one after the other with this single argument: we must respect “the framework of measures aimed at reaching 5% of GDP”. And too bad for those who will pay the price.
Public development aid, for example, loses 700 million euros. “It is nevertheless necessary for the ecological transition, like the ecology and sustainable development mission and the higher education and research mission” who lose 1.3 billion euros and 600 million euros respectively, indignant Thomas Dossus.
School education will see 1.3 billion euros disappear. Failing to envisage new revenue, this finance bill (PLF) is part of “in the continuation of the supply-side policy implemented since 2017, made of fiscal disarmament, which has led to 60 billion euros less revenue per year to favor high incomes and assets. It is a budget which prepares a certain category of France for the future, but certainly not France as a whole. denounces socialist senator Thierry Cozic.
“No new rights”
“The government is only moving forward with successive blows in each mission,” continues Thomas Dossus. This reduction in spending “will slow down many future projects already underway”, he warns. “It is not surprising from a Prime Minister, François Bayrou who, as High Commissioner for Planning since 2020, has been incapable of making a recovery plan for our industrial sovereignty in order to meet our needs “, tackles Pascal Savoldelli, for whom parliamentary discussion is simply prevented: “We continue to debate a budget on which the National Assembly was unable to finish its work. This poses a democratic problem. »
-The result is a liberal budget, against which the entire senatorial left will vote. “We don’t see any new rights there,” notes the communist, before continuing his charge: “There is a form of suspicion on the part of the government towards everything that concerns public action, that of the State through its agencies, and that of local authorities”who will lose several billion euros. At the time we were writing these lines, the amendments of the government and the senatorial right, a real crutch for the Macronists since 2022, had already led to a reduction in the PLF of 4.6 billion euros since the copy of Barnier.
After this Thursday's vote, the text will be transmitted on January 30 to a joint committee made up of deputies and senators, where the executive power, the only one able to table the amendments, will keep control. But there will then be a final vote on the budget, or on a motion of censure tabled following a 49.3 engaging the government's responsibility for the text.
In both cases, François Bayrou will have to count on support, or abstention, from the forces that brought down Michel Barnier. It remains to be seen whether he will succeed in convincing the left, which seems to be off to a bad start, or the National Rally, and with what gestures.
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