“It’s going to take extra effort.”
The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire maintains his line of future savings, to cope with the increase in the public deficit last year, beyond initial forecasts.
INSEE published this Tuesday morning the consolidated figure of a deficit of 5.5% of GDP in 2023.
Public finances “must be restored”, he observed on RTL, calling for “more determination, a lot of method and a lot of composure” to find sources of savings.
At the same time, TF 1 announced that it would receive the Prime Minister on Wednesday at 8 p.m.
Gabriel Attal “will come to reveal the government's latest decisions on work and will speak on several current issues,” explains the channel in a press release.
“5.5% deficit and 110.6% public debt: the last symphony of the Mozart of finance resembles the swan song.
Mr. Macron is responsible for this disastrous record!
», reacted on X Éric Ciotti (LR).
“Instead of reducing immigration costs or tackling social fraud, the macronie will reduce its sovereign spending while increasing our taxes,” denounced RN MEP Jean-Lin Lacapelle on X.
“We can perfectly make savings on public spending without digging into the pockets of the French and I remain totally opposed to any increase in taxes on our compatriots”, defended Bruno Le Maire, believing that “the expenditure has been held” last year.
“Little slip”
“There is probably a little slippage in spending,” said the first president of the Court of Auditors, Pierre Moscovici.
Recalling that “public spending has increased by two points since the Covid crisis”, he estimated, on France Inter, that “we are in a position which forces us to rectify our trajectory and which obliges us to tell the truth to French on our public finances.”
According to him, the government sinned by "excess optimism", by imagining that the good tax revenues of previous years would continue in 2023. On the other hand, he criticized a growth forecast of 1.4 points in the budget for 2024 , “while the consensus said 0.8”.
“What matters to me now is the future trajectory”, “we must bring down the mountain of debt to build the wall of investments”, argued the former socialist minister, recalling twice, with a touch of relief, that he was no longer in political life.
In addition to controlling public spending, that is to say containing expenditure, there are two resources which allow a State to invest in the future.
“1, growth, which must not be broken,” Moscovici began.
“2, taxes.
We have the highest rate of compulsory deductions in Europe,” he recalled.
“I hear about temporary contributions, from François Bayrou, from Yaël Braun-Pivet, we need to discuss it calmly, I am not shocked by that.”
Regarding the policy of whatever the cost, “for normal Covid, but for the tariff shield, the Court considered that it had still benefited energy companies”.
We must, insisted the high magistrate, “share the effort, no one should say that they are paying for others”.
And added: “I’m not saying that out of political preference.
But this feeling is affected, it is democracy which is affected.
»
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The left, which has taken great pains at the savings promised painfully by the pension reform, is campaigning for taxation of the richest.
This Tuesday morning, Bruno Le Maire, opposed to an increase in taxation, opened the door to an increase in the contribution on the “inframarginal rent” of energy companies.
But the Minister in charge of the Economy and Finance instead “called for collective awareness of the need to make choices in all our public spending” and announced that he himself was going to “write to all operators of the State - it could be the National Cinema Center, Business France, all the State agencies...", whose "treasuries are doing well", to tell them "you have one month to make me proposals for 'savings on your budgets, and if you don't make me any proposals, we will decide for you.'