2024-03-22 15:29:00
Emmanuel Macron affirmed Friday that the government would have to “complete” the budgetary effort in the face of the “deterioration of public finances”, while suggesting that new savings should concern social spending or local authorities rather than the budget of the ‘State.
“The Prime Minister is totally aware, with his government, of the situation and took it head on from the start” with “first choices” to “reduce spending” by ten billion euros this year, said said the Head of State following a European summit in Brussels. “It will be necessary to qualify the magnitude of the adjustment that must be made and it will then be necessary to complete it in all useful actions of public spending,” he added to the press.
“Public spending is not just state spending”
With a new turn of the budgetary screw this year? “We must see the magnitude, the reason for this slippage and see behind where it comes from and therefore who contributes to it,” replied Emmanuel Macron. “Public spending is not just state spending,” he added, targeting local authorities and social spending such as unemployment insurance, without naming them, regarding which he has already said in front of his troops that they should contribute to the effort.
Asked regarding the question of taxation of “superprofits” defended by part of his own camp, the president did not comment. The government will announce its “strategy” “next week”, “I am not going to pre-empt technical solutions”, he limited himself to saying.
The executive is under fire for its financial management. The public deficit for the year 2023, initially forecast at 4.9% of GDP, might in reality rise to 5.6%, according to recent forecasts from Bercy updated Thursday by senator LR Jean-François Husson, general rapporteur of the Finance Committee. The official figure will be revealed on Tuesday. Despite the expected slippage, Emmanuel Macron assured that he wanted to “keep our good spending” in favor of investments for the future, while confirming the objectives of starting to reduce the public debt in 2026 and of a public deficit below the bar 3% of GDP in 2027.
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