The deputies began on Monday October 21 the examination of the “revenue” part of the State budget for 2025, which provides for the staggering figure of 60 billion in savings, with the horizon of adoption without a vote via article 49.3 of the Constitution, due to lack of a majority for the government in the Assembly. The start of these budgetary discussions, which promise to be very muscular, launches for good the most important weeks of the young government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier, supported by a fragile majority Les Républicains-macronie and still under the threat of censorship of the National Rally.
Information to remember
⇒ MPs began examining the “revenue” part of the 2025 budget on Monday evening
⇒ The NFP wants to increase the tax burden on the rich
⇒ The examination of the Social Security budget began in parallel in committee
Objective: return below the 5% public deficit mark
Barely 48 hours after its rejection in the Finance Committee, the budget returned to its initial version in a public session, as is customary for budgetary texts. The Minister of the Economy Antoine Armand recalled in his introductory remarks the extraordinary objective of the 2025 budget: to reduce the public deficit to 5% of GDP in 2025. The minister recalled that two thirds of the effort would come from a reduction in spending. “We are not proposing to tax ever more French people who work or those who pass on the fruits of their work to their children,” he promised. He refuted any “austerity” while he forecasts an increase in public spending in volume terms of “0.4%”.
The debates, which promise to be particularly lively, are currently scheduled until Friday midnight, with a solemn vote next Tuesday. But the government leaves itself free to resort to article 49.3 of the Constitution, the Minister of Relations with Parliament, Nathalie Delattre, even estimating in an interview on Monday that “if we arrive at a text that the common base cannot vote, 49.3 would be a protection”. She received MPs from the coalition on Monday at 8:00 p.m.
The NFP wants to increase the tax burden on the rich
In the Finance Committee, the government saw its copy largely rewritten, with 60 billion euros in new tax revenue voted on, according to the chairman of the Finance Committee Éric Coquerel (LFI). The deputies of the New Popular Front are the only ones to have voted for this amended project. Monday evening, they defended their wish to substantially increase the tax burden by taxing the wealthiest. According to Éric Coquerel the text is far from proposing a “fiscal hell”, “it is hardly purgatory: these amendments only propose to take back a small part of the gifts granted since 2017”. “Michel Barnier wanted 60 billion, we found him,” said Eric Coquerel.
60 billion: “A figure unequaled under the Fifth Republic”
In the name of the PS, MP Philippe Brun castigated the “arrogance” of the Minister of the Economy Antoine Armand, while the Assembly “must vote for the first time 60 billion in savings and new revenue, an unequaled figure under the Fifth Republic”, and that the country is “facing a hole of 50 billion euros for which the Macronists have sole responsibility”.
The environmentalist MP Éva Sas also denounced “the alliance of reactionaries against ecology”, while “the government is sacrificing the ecological transition budget with a 17% reduction in credits” and “the National Rally is going further by submitting amendments to remove aid for renewable energies.
In unison with the government, MP LR Véronique Louwagie, on the other hand, said she was in favor of a “sustainable reduction (in) public spending”, wishing to “limit tax increases as much as possible”. Pointing to a “deterioration of our public finances” of an extent “unprecedented under the Fifth Republic”, she recalled the 50 billion euro savings plan proposed by the president of her group Laurent Wauquiez.
Social security budget: pensions at the heart of the debates
In parallel with these debates in the hemicycle, the crucial examination of the Social Security budget also began on Monday in the Social Affairs Committee. Here also with the first heated debates: the deputies, notably from the RN, who also propose the repeal of the pension reform, rejected several amendments from the left in this direction.
To remove the increase in the legal retirement age to 64, without widening the Social Security deficit, several deputies (socialists, ecologists, LFI, and GDR) proposed creating an additional contribution on income above a certain ceiling. They also proposed a “pension financing conference” with the social partners, to find other revenues. The repeal of the reform “would worsen the deficit (of the old age branch) by almost 3.4 billion euros from 2025, and by 16 billion in 2032” according to Retirement Insurance, replied the general rapporteur Yannick Neuder ( LR).
The commission also inflicted first setbacks on the government by deleting several articles from the PLFSS relating to financial balance, including the one which corrected the “hole” in Social Security to 18 billion for 2024. It also adopted several measures favorable to the calculation pensions for non-agricultural employees over their best 25 years, or exemption from contributions for hiring seasonal workers up to 1.25 SMIC. Another amendment adopted plans to exempt from old-age contributions many retired doctors who return to work and “cumulate” employment and pension.