In the midst of the debate on the budget, several voices were raised within the government to relaunch the debate around the elimination of a public holiday. A proposal which does not seem to convince the Prime Minister.
The option was already on the table of almost all governments. Here it is revived on November 11, one of the eleven public holidays on the French calendar. In the midst of the debate on the 2025 finance bill, some are once again calling for eliminating a second non-working day in the year to make budgetary savings. “There are a thousand ways to commemorate without not working”said Jean-François Copé this Monday, at the microphone of France inter.
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The LR mayor of Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), who welcomed Michel Barnier on the same day for the commemorations of the Great War, sees it above all as a means “to make savings in a country which needs to spend a lot to maintain its social model.” Not enough to convince the Prime Minister, who clearly ruled out this measure during his speech in the Ile-de-France city. “It’s a holiday to which we are attached”he said, twenty years after the establishment of the first day of solidarity, Pentecost Monday.
The idea has nevertheless made its way within the government, supported by the Bercy tandem. “One track among others”confirmed last week Antoine Armand in the columns of Echoes. A few days earlier on the LCI set, the Minister of Economy and Finance had already judged “the very interesting proposal, to look closely”while the public deficit could exceed 6% of GDP at the end of the year. Published at the end of September, a senatorial report estimated in particular that the creation of a second day of solidarity would make it possible to raise “2.4 billion euros in additional revenue”.
In search of valuable savings, the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, was also very open to the debate, without however targeting November 11: “I think that everything that allows our country to show that we can participate in the recovery effort is going in the right direction”he pleaded at the end of October on TF1. A proposal also supported by his distant predecessor in Public Accounts, Gérald Darmanin, but also part of the presidential troops.
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