2024-08-18 07:40:32
If Bessie has already started working on the next budget copy, the final decision will be made by the next government, which must submit a finance bill to parliament by October 1. The text must be adopted by January 1, 2025.
This will undoubtedly be the first test for the next executive. With a prime minister not to be appointed before August 23, the new government will have only a few weeks at most to finalise the next budget, an unprecedented and potentially dangerous situation. All the more so in the absence of an absolute majority in parliament and with public finances deteriorating.
What’s the schedule?
The annual draft Finance Law (PLF), one of the only mandatory legislative texts, is particularly large and complex and must be submitted to Parliament no later than the first Tuesday in October (October 1 this year).
Previously, it must have been submitted to the Council of Ministers and, before that, received the opinions of the High Committee for Public Finance (HCFP) and the Council of State. After debate in the National Assembly and the Senate, the financial law must be adopted, promulgated and published by January 1 of the following year.
Where are we?
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire sent Matignon the 2025 credit proposal in early August, and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is responsible for transmitting it to the ministries through a “capping letter” and, if necessary, amending it. Bercy’s copy was well-intentioned, proposing spending cuts that would make it possible to stay on the “track” promised to Brussels, namely to restore the public deficit (state, social security and local authorities) to 3% of GDP by 2027.
Budget Minister Thomas Cazeneuve has just frozen 10 billion euros in the 2024 budget, bringing the total freeze to 16.5 billion euros this year, and the new government will act on its own will. Matignon promised on Wednesday that the cap letter would be sent “in the coming days” but would not “preempt the final decision that the next government will make.”
on time?
The future prime minister will not be named until at least next Friday, the day Emmanuel Macron and parliamentary forces meet at the Elysee Palace, and the clock is ticking.
However, Jean-René Cazeneuve, deputy of the German Renewal Party and former general rapporteur of the budget, stressed that “we can downplay this debate”, given that 90% of the budget is already known, from one year to the next. “Of course, the budget is a political act, but the new measures, both in terms of revenues and expenditures, do not represent the majority of the budgetary masses.”
The budget teams of the ministries will start to play the music to the sheet sent by Matignon, and the new government will undoubtedly have a little time to add its content to the text. Failing that, he can still proceed with the amendments during the parliamentary debate.
But “what is the budget?”, a government source is already worried. “If the budget spends more, it will bring another problem, that of the market,” she said, and France is already wary of this. Especially because France, like six other countries that have been sanctioned by EU procedures for excessive deficits, must also submit its medium-term plan by September 20 to get back on track.
Will the PLF be voted in?
On Thursday, Thomas Cazenave said in the Southwest that this would be a “critical moment” and that he hoped that “all political groups would start discussing at the end of August” the two options, a pure and simple “agreement” if the government resorts to 49.3, or at least an agreement “on not carrying out a review of the budget”.
Jean-René Cazeneuve advocates a simple text with “fundamental principles on which we can agree”. A source in the majority believes that “the more ambitious we are, the more negative reactions there will be from some MPs”. Especially, she said, considering that “many parties are likely to practice the worst politics for the 2027 presidential elections”.
What if the budget is not passed?
In this case, by 2025 “we can no longer guarantee the proper functioning of public services (nor salaries and pensions in public institutions, or a certain number of services that are revalued every year)”, warns Thomas Cazeneuve. The Organic Law on Financial Law (Lolf) still provides that in the event of a blockage, the provisions of the PLF can be adopted by decree.
1723982965
#Calendar #blockage #riskCan #future #government #pass #budget #time
