The two elected officials, respectively chairman of the Finance Committee and general rapporteur of the budget, had put pressure on Michel Barnier’s services the day before to obtain documents from the 2025 Budget project.
Charles de Courson and Eric Coquerel, September 17, 2024, in Paris (AFP / LUDOVIC MARIN)
The saga continues. The chairman of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, Eric Coquerel (LFI), and the general rapporteur Charles de Courson (Liot) said they were “angry” after leaving Matignon empty-handed, where they had come to demand key documents from the draft budget for 2025, on Tuesday, September 17.
“It’s a constitutional right!” proclaims Coquerel
“We are quite stunned (…) because we were refused access to these documents”
declared Eric Coquerel as he left Matignon, about half an hour after his arrival. “It is a constitutional right that is granted to the chairman of the Finance Committee and to the general rapporteur of the budget, we were refused it,” he added, accusing President Emmanuel Macron of “endangering democracy” and of “democratic denial.”
The two representatives of the Finance Committee have the right to carry out on-site inspections and checks on budgetary documents.
The two heads of the Finance Committee had indicated that they were requesting the ceiling letters setting the credits of the ministries within the framework of the 2025 budget project. In a letter sent on Monday evening to Eric Coquerel, Prime Minister Michel Barnier had explained that the budget would be “constructed on the basis of these ceiling letters”, adopted by the outgoing government and communicated to the ministries on August 20, according to the LFI MP. In this letter, the head of government promised to communicate to him by the end of the week “a provisional version” of the “offprint”, a report summarizing the amount of credits by mission and the general orientations of the budget, drawn up on the basis of these ceiling letters and whose transmission was normally planned before July 15.
