France's public deficit will reach 6.1% of GDP in 2024, according to the Ministry of the Economy

France's deficit, which reached 5.5% of GDP in 2023, will worsen further, as the Budget Minister announced at the end of September.

France's public deficit will reach 6.1% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024, according to the end-of-management finance bill (which sets budgetary adjustments until the end of the year) presented on Wednesday 6 November in the Council of Ministers, announced the Ministry of the Economy. The Minister responsible for the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, announced at the end of September that it risked exceeding 6%, in a context of deterioration in public finances. This is a significant slippage compared to the deficit of 4.4% which was forecast in the initial finance bill for 2024, while France's deficit reached 5.5% of GDP in 2023.

According to the government, this deficit would have been even more important without the cancellation of credits of several billion euros which made it possible to reduce the expenditure of the French State by around 6 billion euros to 486.4 billion euros. In an opinion on the end-of-management finance bill (PLFG), the High Council of Public Finances (HCFP) called on the government to retain “cautious assumptions” in its financial texts, to avoid a new “major slip” public accounts.

To fill the public deficit, the government presented a 2025 budget in which it plans a budgetary effort of 60 billion euros. The executive wants to make 40 billion savings by reducing spending and finding 20 billion by increasing its revenues.