Budget 2023: "Which young person will want to join the public service tomorrow?"

Normalien and agrégé in history, professor in preparatory classes, Benoît Pellistrandi has notably published "History of Spain, from the Napoleonic wars to the present day" (Perrin, 2013) and "The Catalan Labyrinth" (Desclée de Brouwer, 2019).

According to INSEE, inflation in December will reach 6.6% over one year.

The Banque de France estimates, for its part, that in 2023 the rise in prices should fall within a range of between 4.3 and 6.9%.

The 2023 budget presented by Bruno Le Maire and Gabriel Attal envisages another year of freezing the index point.

The eleventh after 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021… In 2016, in a pre-election context, the Valls government had increased the index point by 1.2%.

In July 2022, the Borne government, swept away by the wave of inflation, had to reverse the initial freeze provided for in the 2022 budget and ratify a 3.5% increase in this index point.

Between 2012 and 2021, cumulative inflation in France was 10%, according to INSEE figures.

It will be 22.8% from 2012 to 2023 (using the Banque de France's average scenario of 4.9% in 2023).

All public service agents will therefore, on the basis of their salary, have lost 18% of the purchasing power of their index point in twelve years.

The impoverishment of the teaching profession continues: it will even accelerate in 2022 and 2023.

Benoit Pellistrandi

In 1981, a certified began his career with the equivalent of a salary of 2.2 times the minimum wage.

In 2020, we had gone to 1.15.

Jean-Michel Blanquer boasted of having started to reverse the curve with a figure of 1.22 in 2021. given the evolution of the Smic and inflation, on a certified salary barely equivalent to 1.2 times the minimum salary.

The impoverishment of the teaching profession continues: it will even accelerate in 2022 and 2023. But this is true of the entire public service, particularly in hospitals or in the police, while President Macron and his government are constantly express their attachment to its reinforcement.

We don't know if we are faced with incompetence, helplessness or assumed cynicism.

Civil servants had no choice but to accept these policies.

In vain !

No recovery in public finances has taken place in 2011 and today.

Our deficit continues to be well above 3% of GDP.

Public debt has exploded to more than 115% of GDP and the financing needs of the State are forcing the French signature to a rapid increase in its borrowing rates.

The State, and in particular Bercy, has the most remarkable information and forecasting elements.

The notes from the Ministry of Finance are always extremely precise, the budget forecasts skilfully drawn up… And yet they are always false.

Indeed, the political parameter leads to overestimating growth, understating the deficit and hiding concrete realities behind fabricated averages.

Not only is France badly managed, but what is more, it is in danger of political and social cohesion, without mentioning the choice of no longer preparing for the future.

Benoit Pellistrandi

No doubt there is no longer any room for maneuver, but the choice to impoverish all public service agents, at a time when the whole of French society perceives the collapse of the quality of the school , of the hospital, is sensitive to the demoralization of the police and the forces of order, is part of a foolish bet that can only feed the populist temptations that run through it.

Not only is France badly managed, but what is more, it is in danger of political and social cohesion, without mentioning the choice of no longer preparing for the future.

To the extent of current consideration, what young person will want to commit to the worst boss in France who mistreats his incumbents, belly dances to contract workers whom he uses and abuses and destroys the sense of the professions of his agents?

What have we done to deserve this?

To the neo-liberal speeches too quickly argued on the weight of the public service, perhaps it would be time to substitute an argument made of truth and commitment.

It is not the civil servants who are today, in France, the problem of the civil service: it is the irresponsibility of the heads of these civil servants - ministers, presidents of regional, departmental and municipal executives - who, from on the one hand have a clientelist management of recruitment and on the other, rely on the assurance that the vocation that still drives caregivers, security forces and teachers guarantees the quality of their work in the long term.

Let us take care that the great discouragement does not end up winning us over and carrying us away.