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Budgetary slippage: Bruno Le Maire puts the blame on the current government
At the head of Bercy for seven years, the former Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire on Thursday refuted any “fault” or “cover-up” in the face of the significant deterioration of France's public finances, shifting responsibility to the current government. Deploring the “attacks” and “lies” suffered according to him for “months”, the 55-year-old former great financier came to defend his “truth” before the Finance Committee of the Senate, which began a series of hearings as part of an information mission on the drift in public accounts, before a commission of inquiry in the National Assembly. “When I am told that the deficit in 2024 will be at 6.1%, it is the choice of the current government,” he said. “If all the measures that we had prepared with Thomas Cazenave (the former minister of Public Accounts) in June and July had been implemented without delay by the new government, coupled with revenue measures on energy rents and on share buybacks with retroactive effect, they would have made it possible to contain the deficit For 2024 at 5.5% without tax increase. The public deficit should reach 6.1% of GDP in 2024. It was forecast at 4.4% in the fall of 2023 then was reassessed to 5.1% in the spring by the previous government. At the beginning of January, “I clearly indicate (…) that the hardest part is ahead of us”, while maintaining the deficit objective at 4.4%, explained Bruno Le Maire. Today, this declaration has earned me brutal accusations”, against which he is “totally false”. – “Total watertightness” -The poor health of French finances, which rank the second largest economy in the euro zone among the poor European students, can be explained, according to him, by the massive support deployed during successive crises, and more recently by much lower tax revenues than expected “There was no fault, no concealment, no desire to deceive. There was fundamentally a serious technical error in evaluating revenues,” explained Bruno Le Maire, who has now left to teach in Lausanne, Switzerland. Revenues are 41.5 billion euros lower than forecasts. He insisted on the fact that “never, at any time, neither the cabinet, nor a fortiori the minister, say a word about the evaluation of revenue”: there is “total impermeability” in order to avoid a risk of “manipulation”. The chairman of the committee of Finances Claude Raynal (PS) estimated that the government had internal notes very early on which predicted a sharper slippage than expected, and that it was slow to take them into account.Bruno Le Maire contested the rapid deterioration of the situation. economic and geopolitical environment at the start of 2024, leading to a lowering of the growth forecast from 1.4% to 1.1%, Bercy reacted by canceling 10 billion euros of credit in February. the former minister regretted having failed to convince within the executive of the need for an amending finance bill in the spring for 15 billion, while saying he supported this decision. – “Self-satisfaction” – “I note this kind of fireworks of collective and united self-satisfaction on your action which is paid for (…) at the high price (…) of a colossal and abysmal debt”, said retorted the general budget rapporteur Jean-François Husson (LR), recalling that Bruno Le Maire was still minister at the beginning of September. The unexpected slippage in the deficit, after that already observed in 2023, to 5.5% of GDP against 4.9% forecast, raised questions about the reliability of the forecasts of the previous Macronist majority. “It is no longer a + perfect, exceptional storm +, it is rather a long-lasting hurricane”, quipped Jean-François Husson, recalling remarks made by the ex-minister before their commission during a first part of the mission carried out in the spring. “You said 'the reduction of France's debt, for seven years, was my obsession. Fortunately you say it, because the facts unfortunately strongly contradict you.' After the former head of Bercy, the Senate will hear Thomas Cazenave in the afternoon, then former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday and his predecessor Elisabeth Borne on November 15, before examining the 2025 draft budget in the coming days in the upper house, where the senatorial majority, an LR-centrist alliance, has switched to the “common base”.mpa/abb/jco
