2023-08-22 03:22:46
Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy, and Thomas Cazenave, the Minister Delegate for the Budget, leaving the Council of Ministers, in Paris, July 21, 2023. CYRIL BITTON / DIVERGENCE FOR “THE WORLD”
Politics sometimes has its ironies. It is up to Thomas Cazenave, the new Minister Delegate for the Budget, who will have the task of presenting, at the end of September, a finance bill for 2024 in the form of squaring the circle: lowering expenditure to reduce the colossal tricolor debt, while by investing in ecological transition and public services. This same Thomas Cazenave who, at the start of Macron’s first five-year term in 2017, failed to set the “CAP 22” project to music, which aimed to reduce public spending. Will the former deputy director of Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet at Bercy have more success in building the next budget?
More than a year following the re-election of the Head of State, the consequences of the various crises (Covid-19, energy) finally seem to be receding. Nevertheless, the 2024 vintage, which should be on the menu of the Council of Ministers back to school, Wednesday August 23, looks bleak for the French. And even threatens to blur the economic course traced for six years by Emmanuel Macron.
Since the beginning of the summer, Bercy, like the Elysée, has been preparing people’s minds for a much more frugal budget. There are many reasons for concern: a public debt exceeding the threshold of 3,000 billion euros for the first time, interest rates that have been skyrocketing for eighteen months… The downgrading by the Fitch agency of the rating sovereign of France, in April, permanently shook Bercy. “We all have efforts to make, a responsibility vis-à-vis our public accounts. I call on everyone to be serious regarding budgeting”launched Roland Lescure, Minister Delegate for Industry, Monday August 21 on Europe 1.
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At the end of June, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, assured that he wanted to generate 10 billion to 12 billion euros in savings in 2024. In the sights of the government: health expenditure (increased control of sick leave, increase deductible of 1 euro on medicines) or employment aid deemed poorly targeted (learning, personal training account). “It will be more like 15 billion”adds his entourage today.
Lower growth
Because, at the same time, the financing of climate change has imposed itself in Macronie: the economist Jean Pisani-Ferry, former adviser to the president, has calculated the amount of public money at more than 30 billion euros per year. necessary for the transition. At the beginning of July, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, announced to release 7 billion euros from 2024.
Ecology is not the only new expense with which Bercy will have to deal: between Emmanuel Macron’s promises for public services – raising the index point for civil servants, additional means for the police and justice following the riots June urban events – and the various programming laws (research, armies), the list has grown even longer. All this once morest a background of slower growth.
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