“It has been fifty years since France has been in deficit. The last budget presenting a positive balance dates back to 1974: + 8.5 billion francs of the time, the equivalent of 200 million euros today. In 1975, public spending in France represented approximately 46 % of GDP and compulsory levies 35 % of GDP. With between 56 % and 57 % of public spending today and around 44 % Compulsory, we can clearly see that the drift was done both in expenses and additional tax and social pressure. […]
We overlook our companies and households every year and our households and we deaf in the order of 260 billion compared to the average of our Euro zone. All this to finance public services which are not better as shown in particular by PISA rankings for education, but accompanied by an XXL social protection system. […]
“We have recorded the worst deficit in the Fifth Republic”
We had been promised: the year 2023 was supposed to present a budget to the nearest euro. Result: the deficit, instead of absorbing itself compared to 2022, widened from 126 to 154 billion euros! […] The revelation of a deficit at 5.5 % of GDP in 2023 had the effect of a bomb. We feared that France would become the red lantern of the public deficit in the euro zone in 2024 … The figures showed that it was already in 2023. And this may start again in 2025. In 2023, we recorded the worst deficit, excluding recession and excluding crisis, of the Fifth Republic. And for 2024, the figures are just as bad. 175 billion euros in deficit! Over 6 % of GDP! An excitement that gives the impression that our leaders have thrown sponge and let the expenses spin.
Our fellow citizens have in mind the declarations of the ministers who explain that this slippage is due above all to the fact that the tax and social revenues have returned to the public funds than expected. However, this is not completely the case. The problem comes mainly from public spending which increased by more than 50 billion between 2022 and 2023 and more than 60 billion between 2023 and 2024 … while the revenues increased less than expected. […]
The IMF or rating agencies finally begin to integrate that we have reached a maximum of taxes, taxes and contributions. They urge – they are also very late – France to lower its public spending. We are at a turning point. When the agencies note that taxes do not come in enough, that economic players are on pause, asserted by political instability and the risks of fiscal flip-flop, that the savings on expenses are even less than announced and that deficits are not resolved, the consequences are known: a brutal increase in our sovereign interest rates on the financial markets. Increase which would result in an unbearable cost of the load of debt. The rest, we know her … “
*Agnès Verdier-Molinié, Facing the wall: debt, deindustrialization, standards, assistantship, insecurity, Editions Paper, 2025.
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