One of the first tasks of the new Bayrou government, the fourth in 2024, will be to have a budget adopted, with the objective of gravitating around a “5%” public deficit.
François Bayrou, December 19, 2024, on the set of France 2 (AFP / VALENTINE CHAPUIS)
How to get things back on track? Prime Minister François Bayrou pleaded Monday, December 23 for a return of the public deficit objective “around” 5% or “a little more” in 2025, where his predecessor Michel Barnier had set the bar at 5%. “I think we need to find around five, a little more than five, something that will allow us to find an agreement and a balance,” he said on
BFMTV
.
“We must find a balance, which does not target companies, those who invest,” he continued. The Prime Minister indicated that he had ”
never liked the indictment of large groups: large groups, SMEs and very small businesses, it's a single economy”,
he said.
“Efforts to be made”
However, François Bayrou does not seem to have completely renounced the targeted tax increases appearing in the Finance bill for 2025 prepared by the Barnier government:
“I'm not saying that we can't find some effort to make for a short time”,
he noted. For him, “we need a tax system that does not prevent the economy from living, from developing, from opening new projects, from finding new technologies.”
He reiterated his position on the ISF:
“I was in favor of excluding productive investment, money useful for the country,”
because “it’s not an annuity”, according to him.
But before increasing taxes, the Prime Minister first wants to “give priority to reducing unproductive public spending”. “I am for a dynamic economy,” he concluded.
