Declarations “adventurous”, “wait and see”, “inaction”, “double talk”, “short-sighted calculations”, “irresponsibility”, “collective denial”, “unconsciousness”… The report delivered Tuesday, November 19 by the senators of the Finance Committee on the deterioration of public accounts since October 2023 is not euphemistic.
Responsible for analyzing the slippage observed in recent months, the mission led by the two leaders of the commission, Claude Raynal (Socialist Party, Haute-Garonne) and Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains, Meurthe-et-Moselle), resulted in a conclusion in the form of a verdict. Beyond obvious forecast errors, the current crisis is largely due, according to the senators, to a series of faulty political decisions taken by Macronist leaders. Stung, they decided to react immediately. A joint press conference by Bruno Le Maire, Gabriel Attal, Elisabeth Borne and Thomas Cazenave is announced for Tuesday afternoon.
At the heart of the questions, an unprecedented slippage. In 2023, the public deficit had already proven to be more massive than expected, at 5.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) instead of the targeted 4.4%. “A mistake like this cannot happen twice”had promised Bruno Le Maire, then Minister of the Economy. Missed. In 2024, the deficit which was expected to return to 4.4% of GDP is actually likely to reach at least 6.1%. A new discrepancy of around 50 billion euros.
“A form of budgetary unconsciousness”
During their hearings, Bruno Le Maire and his budget minister, Thomas Cazenave, defended themselves in a similar manner, as did the successive prime ministers, Elisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal. According to them, the” hurricane “ The budget is 75% or 80% linked to an erroneous assessment of revenues by Bercy's services, an assessment on which they claim to have had no say. As soon as the scale of the problem became apparent, everyone said they reacted quickly and decisively.
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A version contradicted by the Senate. As in Crime on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie, all suspects have their share of responsibility, according to the report. The technicians from Bercy? Of course, they poorly anticipated how tax revenues would evolve with growth. After two financial years 2021 and 2022 where money came into the coffers better than expected, “a form of budgetary unconsciousness” undoubtedly led them to overestimate the following recipes. In total, those for 2024 should be 41.5 billion euros lower than initial forecasts, which effectively explains around 80% of the unexpected deficit.
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