This Thursday, the day of the presentation of the 2025 draft budget, Prime Minister Michel Barnier has already warned that it could be “improved” while ensuring that the effort requested must nevertheless remain “fair” and “balanced”.
“We have already made adjustments and amendments, we have others which will be made by government amendment during the […] budgetary discussion,” remarks Michel Barnier. He adds, however, that “Parliament can improve” this draft budget and that it “will have the capacity” to do so. But to a certain extent, “by preserving the balances that we want”, he insisted. He therefore concedes his draft budget as being “perfectible”.
No more “wooden or blank checks”
The Prime Minister thus sets his limits, affirming that we “cannot sacrifice the future of our children, continue to draw wooden or blank checks on the heads of our children, neither for the budget, nor for the ecology”. Because, if he wants the effort asked of the French to be “fair” and “balanced”, the head of government intends to fill the deficit, which should reach 6.1% of GDP in 2024, very far from the 3% required through Brussels.
And beyond Brussels, it is also the side of the rating agencies that the Prime Minister is eyeing, the latter having to give their verdict in the coming weeks on the financial solidity of France. “The attractiveness or credibility of the French signature must be preserved,” insisted Michel Barnier.
Thus, as it stands, the draft budget which must be debated in the fall by Parliament provides for 40 billion euros in spending cuts as well as 20 billion in tax increases.
