A romantic escape: the resigning French Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, pleaded on Thursday for the continuation of the cleaning up of France’s very deteriorated public finances, in a speech tinged with “love” taking stock of his seven-year term at Bercy.
While the new Prime Minister Michel Barnier promised a government for next week, Bruno Le Maire sent a fiery message to the hundreds of ministers, civil servants, advisers and parliamentarians who came to listen to his farewell speech in the courtyard of the ministry.
This writer and former literature professor, author of the novel “American Fugue”, said he was ready to turn the page on politics to return to his first passion, teaching, “this time on economic and geopolitical subjects”.
“As Michel Sardou would say, I love you, but I’m leaving,” declared the great treasurer, who had an unmatched longevity under the Fifth Republic, as an introduction, taking up the words of this star of French variety. Only Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has done better, but intermittently.
As a farewell gift, his colleague Olivia Grégoire, in charge of Trade, gave blue-white-red Millet sneakers made in Ardèche to the man who had made the reindustrialization of France a priority.
– He doesn’t regret anything –
But despite the determination displayed to straighten them out, Bruno Le Maire leaves behind public finances in the red, degraded by the tens of billions of euros of support spent during the crises (yellow vests, inflation, Covid). “We have not squandered public money, we have protected the French people,” he assumed, with pride and without regret.
Boasting of having brought about “the economic transformation of France”, wanting to make it an attractive nation of production and full employment, the minister warned the next government.
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“France must not go back on restoring its public accounts” and must maintain the objective of bringing the public deficit below 3% of GDP, declared Mr. Le Maire. This objective, set by European budgetary rules, is increasingly considered unattainable by this timeframe by observers of the economic situation.
“Wisdom recommends holding this line, reducing the scale of spending,” he continued, in a speech interrupted by applause: “Any other decision would mechanically lead to increasing taxes or plunging France into acute and immediate financial difficulties,” he added.
– School is not over –
No more than on reindustrialization, “France must not go back on taxes either”, reduced by 55 billion euros for businesses and households since 2017, argued Bruno Le Maire. He instead defended a global taxation of billionaires, like that of multinationals and digital giants.
A tax increase is rejected on the right, with the National Rally, a key player in the new Assembly, having warned that it would expose Michel Barnier’s government to a motion of censure.
Before the early legislative elections were called at the beginning of the summer, Bruno Le Maire had achieved 10 billion euros in savings for 2024 out of a stated ambition of 25 billion.
This is largely insufficient, warned the Treasury in a note dated July: without additional measures, the public deficit will worsen compared to forecasts, while Paris has already been criticized by the European Commission for excessive deficit.
This deficit could reach 5.6% of GDP this year (against 5.1% forecast) and 6.2% in 2025 (against 4.1%). A return to European standards in 2027 would require 110 billion in savings by that time.
However, time is running out to present a draft budget for 2025. This particularly heavy text is supposed to be submitted to Parliament by October 1, then published by December 31.
For Bruno Le Maire, three priorities are essential for the coming years: wages and labor productivity, the climate, and private financing of the economy via the capital markets union.
Choices that are no longer his to make. “It is time for me to breathe air other than that of politics,” he declared “with a pang in his heart.”
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