It looks particularly fiery after the bad figures published today by INSEE. A debate on public finances will be organized in the National Assembly on April 29, at the request of the Finance Committee of the lower house, we learned, Tuesday, March 26, from a parliamentary source which follows the strong deterioration of France’s budgetary situation.
After a speech by the government, representatives of all political groups will be able to speak in the hemicycle during this “debate on the orientation and programming of public finances”.
The oppositions once again severely attacked the government following the publication of these results by INSEE. “The government’s policy is in a situation of failure”, estimated the Budget rapporteur in the Senate, Jean-François Husson (LR), for whom the Minister of Economy and Finance “Bruno Le Maire is discredited and discredited” . “It is a collapse of France’s authority in Europe,” he judged, while the country, third most indebted in the euro zone, promised its European partners to bring its deficit below the 3% of GDP in 2027.
A “scathing disavowal” of “Emmanuel Macron’s record”
“It is a debate on the orientation law” of public finances and “not quite” about “the budget which we are talking about at the moment”, declared to Franceinfo Eric Coquerel, rebellious president of the Commission of economic affairs of the National Assembly. “I asked for it to have at least a debate on the direction [des finances publiques], so it will take place. But this is not a debate on the current budgetary modifications which must come before the Assembly”, he added, while the government had already presented 10 billion savings during the month of February. This portends an “unprecedented bleeding on public finances”, regretted Manuel Bompard (LFI) on France 2, seeing in the INSEE figure a “scathing disavowal” of “Emmanuel Macron’s balance sheet”.
For his part, Bruno Le Maire defended that “this exceptional deficit of 5.5% is not linked to a surge in public spending”, but “to lower revenue than anticipated, despite a sincere and realistic growth figure ” from the government, mentioning “21 billion euros less revenue in 2023” during a briefing with journalists
“We may have underestimated the fact that inflation is falling faster” than expected, which “results in less VAT revenue, (…) less revenue on the payroll, less tax on income, less corporate tax”, he also explained on RTL. Bruno Le Maire, despite everything, reaffirmed that his “determination to restore public finances and to return the public deficit below 3% in 2027” was “intact” and “total”. The debate in the Assembly already promises to be tough.