Still no new Prime Minister. An executive confined to “current affairs” for forty-eight days. For the preparation of the State budget in 2025, the situation caused by the lack of choice of a new tenant of Matignon by Emmanuel Macron is becoming so tense that the resigning government is going so far as to ignore the law and disrupt the timetable set out in the texts. According to information from Mondehe is even studying the possibility of postponing the official transmission of the draft finance bill to Parliament, which would be a first in recent history.
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For weeks, the resigning government has been caught between two fires. On the one hand, it is no longer supposed to make political decisions. On the other, it must ensure the continuity of the State, therefore ensuring that France can have a budget at 1is January 2025. Tossed between these rather contradictory demands, the executive has, with delay, developed a draft budget, and sent letters to the ministries capping their appropriations. All state expenditure is fixed at 492 billion euros, as in the initial finance law voted for 2024.
In principle, the government was to present the first lines of the budget, on the expenditure side, to parliamentarians. “before July 15th”. This is what the organic law on finance laws provides. But this year, Matignon decided not to respect this limit, in order not to sign a binding administrative document and, on the contrary, to leave room for maneuver to the next government. A month and a half after the deadline, set for July 15, the “offprint” document provided for by law is therefore still not available. Enough to arouse the discontent of parliamentarians.
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On Friday, August 30, the president and general rapporteur of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly set an ultimatum to Thomas Cazenave, the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts who has resigned. Either the information blocked at Matignon is transmitted to them, at the latest, Monday, September 2, or Eric Coquerel (La France Insoumise, LFI) and Charles de Courson (Libertés, indépendants, outre-mer et territoires) will go and get it themselves from Bercy, they threaten in a letter published on August 30 by Agence France-Presse.
“Red alert”
Thomas Cazenave heard the message. “On Monday evening, parliamentarians will have the information”promises his office. However, it will not be a legal “offprint”, but a document that more or less includes the same elements, without having the character of an administrative act. In August, Matignon invented the “reversible budget”, by sending ceiling letters officially designed to be amended by the next government. Here he is continuing his budgetary creativity with the “pseudo-offprint”.
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