Economy: the “safety hole” narrower than expected in 2021

The account is good, if not positive.

The Social Security deficit has been reduced by a third in 2021, to 24.6 billion euros, announced Tuesday the Minister of Public Accounts, Olivier Dussopt.

He hopes that this “balance much less degraded” than expected will have “a positive effect” this year and the following ones.

With this loss of 24.6 billion, social security remains even lower than its trough in 2010 post-financial crisis.

But after the abysmal record of 38.7 billion in 2020, the recovery is spectacular.

The last budget, voted in December, still counted on a deficit of 33.5 billion, even if the economic recovery already augured better results.

In fact, "the balance is much less degraded than what was expected," said Mr. Dussopt during a hearing before the Senate Social Affairs Committee.

Companies' ability to cope has been significant

Thanks to a surplus of growth, Social Security saw its revenues rebound by 9.7% last year, collecting more contributions (3.9 billion), taxes (1.5 billion) and levies on the self-employed (1 billion) than expected.

It also recovered 1.8 billion euros provisioned for payment deferrals granted to companies, whose "ability to cope is greater than what we imagined, which is good news", a-t- he observes.

At the same time, expenditure increased further by 5.6%, with in particular 239.5 billion for health insurance, i.e. an "overrun" of 700 million euros linked to "the fifth epidemic wave" of Covid-19. 19 and “the acceleration of the screening campaign” at the end of the year.

Read alsoThe Covid debt will not be repaid before... 2042

Subject to a lull on the health front, the “substantial” improvement in the Social Security accounts “could have a positive effect on the balance for the 2022 financial year and the following years”, indicated Mr. Dussopt, even s t is “not possible at this stage” to measure its extent.