The opposition wants to put pressure on Bercy. The president and general rapporteur of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly demanded, on Friday, August 30, that the resigning Minister of Public Accounts Thomas Cazenave communicate to them by Monday certain budget documents. Otherwise, they threaten to go and conduct investigations themselves at the Ministry of Finance.
Eric Coquerel (LFI) and Charles de Courson (Liot) want to see documents related to the 2024 and 2025 budgets that Thomas Cazenave “promised” them for Monday. “In the event of non-transmission of these documents on Monday, September 2, we will jointly carry out investigations on documents and on site in order to study this information as soon as possible,” the two men wrote in a letter seen by AFP.
The documents they are waiting for are, they explain in their letter, “if not the legal budget documents, which you link to the appointment of a new government, which we can understand, but at least summary documents allowing an analysis of the budgetary work in progress both for 2024 and the finance law for 2025”. “They will therefore allow us to inform our committee in view of our first office on September 4”, they indicate.
“Ceiling letters” sent to ministries
The two men, who spoke successively with Thomas Cazenave on Thursday, explain in their letter that they hoped “to receive the ‘ceiling letters’ relating to the draft finance bill for 2025 as soon as they were sent to the ministers on August 20”. In order to advance the budgetary process for the next government, Matignon sent these letters setting the credits for their missions to the various ministries ten days ago. “However, these documents have still not been sent to us”, indicate Eric Coquerel and Charles de Courson: “We can only be surprised when the press, after having had access to them, recently revealed their content.”
Some leaks have indeed occurred in the media, particularly concerning the budget of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, or that of the Ministry of Labor. “Added to this are the successive postponements of sending the offprint” (a document that lists these spending ceilings and the differences compared to the previous year, and outlines the government’s major budgetary wishes, Editor’s note), they add.
“Initially announced for mid-August and then by August 30, these setbacks illustrate your political difficulties in appointing a government but could also be of a nature to create doubt among some about your willingness to inform Parliament with a view to examining and voting on the draft finance bill,” finally estimate Eric Coquerel and Charles de Courson.