Parliament definitively adopted, on Wednesday December 18, following a vote in the Senate, the “special law” making it possible to compensate for the absence of a budget for 2025. Submitted urgently after the censure of Michel Barnier’s government, the text was was voted unanimously in the Senate. While awaiting the constitution of a new full-function government around François Bayrou and above all a real budget for the year 2025, Parliament is responding to the most pressing needs with this atypical bill. The text authorizes the executive to collect taxes and borrow to finance the State and Social Security.
France therefore avoids “shutdown”. But this law, which will be promulgated at the last minute before December 31, will not spare the government and Parliament from having to debate and vote again to provide France with a budget for 2025. “This special law gives everything that the State needs to ensure its essential functions at the beginning of 2025, but nothing more. It must be supplemented as quickly as possible” by a budget, estimated the general rapporteur of the finance committee. Senate, Jean-François Husson (The Republicans).
Indexation of tax to inflation rejected
The version of the text adopted in the Senate is almost identical to that adopted by the National Assembly. The debates revolved around the question of the “censorship bill”, Michel Barnier’s supporters trying to blame the opposition for their responsibility for interrupting the budgetary debates. “Our deficit is still there, our debt is still there. The budgetary emergency is still there. It will only get worse over the days and weeks,” said the resigning Minister of the Economy Antoine Armand. .
The left, a minority in the Senate, protested against these criticisms. The communist Pascal Savoldelli identified “a disastrous communication sequence intended to frighten our compatriots”. “The same causes will produce the same effects” and “will lead to the same fall of François Bayrou,” said ecologist Thomas Dossus.
The proposal to index the income tax scale to inflation, already made by the opposition in the National Assembly, was once again deemed inadmissible by the majority in the Senate, which considers that the very restricted scope of this “special law” must remain reduced to budgetary emergencies. But this can be corrected in time if a proper budget is adopted during the first quarter of 2025.
When will there be a budget for 2025?
Many voices in the Senate, dominated by an alliance of the right and the center, have also seized this debate on the special law to call for the budgetary debates to resume where they left off at the time of the censorship of the government of Michel Barnier, without tabling a new finance bill. “This would allow everything to be re-discussed, but within a more reasonable time frame” than if it were necessary to start from scratch with a new budget, recommended the socialist president of the Finance Committee, Claude Raynal.
“Starting from scratch to build a new budget would mean that there would be no budget before April at the earliest,” worried senator LR Stéphane Sautarel, fearing a timetable that would “deepen the budget even further.” deficit”. But part of the left – communists, ecologists – does not hear it that way: “We must review the copy”, launched the communicated senator Pascal Savoldelli, hoping that Parliament “does not resume work as if nothing is happening”. had happened.”
At the same time, the Senate intends to continue a mission to control budgetary slippage, launched almost a year ago, by extending it in particular to the question of expenses that the executive can incur by decree thanks to this “special law”. Their scope remains vague even if it must be limited to a “minimum of credits” deemed “essential”. The ministers nevertheless clarified that the aid to Mayotte, devastated by a cyclone, fell within the scope of a “clear emergency” reason.