In summary
The State plans to make 60 billion savings in its 2025 budget.
The State could take 3 billion from the revenues of regions, departments, intermunicipalities and municipalities.
According to the Intercommunalités de France association, 450 communities would be affected for amounts ranging from 0.8 to 154 million euros.
The government must present its 2025 finance bill at the end of the day this Thursday, October 10, 2024. The text will aim to make 60 billion euros in savings, supported by all public administrations. Two thirds of this effort, or 40 billion euros, will come from spending cuts and a little less than a third (20 billion euros) from tax increases.
Of these 40 billion in spending reductions, the State plans to request an effort of 5 billion euros from local authorities (regions, departments, intercommunities).
Read also: TRUE/FALSE. Is France on the brink of collapse with its debt of 3,200 billion?
The 1901 Intercommunalités de France association, which brings together nearly 1,000 intermunicipalities out of the 1,254 in France, has taken out its calculator to estimate what amount will be taken from the revenue of each intercommunality, department and region.
Three billion euros in deductions
According to Intercommunalités de France, communities will see the State take a total of 3 billion euros from their revenue. These are the departments which will feel the blow the most, with more than a billion euros in deductions.
For the association, nearly 450 local authorities would be concerned for individual amounts ranging from 0.8 (Kourou in Guyana) to 154 million euros (City of Paris). Here, according to calculations by Intercommunalités de France, how these sums would be distributed among the different communities.
1.1 billion euros for the departments (map produced by Intercommunalités de France):
497 million euros for intercommunalities (map produced by Intercommunalités de France):
812 million euros for the municipalities (map produced by West France with French Intermunicipalities data):
606 million euros for the regions (map produced by Intercommunalités de France):
Angry communities
In a column published this Thursday morning, 44 elected officials from large cities and metropolises ask the government to engage in real dialogue, and believe that “the attacks coming from the central State on a supposed mismanagement local public finances are as unacceptable as they are unfounded”.
Intercommunalités de France denounces the State levies which occur while the intercommunalités are “at the peak of their investment cycle”. The sums taken will constrain them “either to give up their projects, or to go into heavy debt to honor the contracts they have signed”.
Maël de Calan, president of the departmental council of Finistère, says “very angry” . He warns: “We are going to fight. I am going to write to our eight deputies and four senators to ask them to take a position, publicly, on this proposal which, if implemented, would result in reducing the resources of nursing homes, firefighters, disabilities… Is that Is this really what our national representatives want? I think not. »
There is no doubt that everywhere in other regions and departments, pressure on parliamentarians will also be exerted. The debates on the 2025 state budget promise to be heated in the National Assembly, where the government lacks an absolute majority.