The outgoing government has renewed the amount of state credits for 2025, at 492 billion euros, Matignon indicated on Tuesday 20 August, while the next team, which has not yet been appointed by Emmanuel Macron, will only have a few weeks to prepare the 2025 budget. “The main concern of Prime Minister” Gabriel Attal, who handed over the ceiling letters to the ministries on Tuesday, “is that the government that succeeds him has the means to present a budget within the time limits provided for by the organic laws”, it was explained on rue de Varenne, without repeating the reductions suggested by the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire.
492 billion euros of state credits, “this is what was in the 2024 finance law and this is what is reproduced in the ceiling letters that could serve as a basis for the 2025 finance law”, the same source added. Matignon is putting forward a “reversible budget, which allows France to equip itself with a budget on time but which will also allow the next government to make its own choices on the basis of what has been prepared and transmitted to the ministries”.
The copy pursues “two objectives”: the “responsibility” of the Prime Minister who “goes to the end of his duty by avoiding the budgetary wall” and “the absolute respect of the ballot boxes”, insists the same source. At the end of July, Bruno Le Maire had indicated that he would make proposals for “significant” cuts, amounting to 5 billion euros, in order to ensure the recovery of public finances.
Emmanuel Macron, who will be meeting with various political and parliamentary leaders from Friday, has still not appointed a new Prime Minister, six weeks after the legislative elections and thirty-five days after accepting the resignation of Gabriel Attal’s government, which remained in place to deal with current affairs.
“Zero Value” Budget
However, the annual draft finance bill (PLF), which must be adopted and promulgated before 1 January, must be submitted to Parliament no later than the first Tuesday in October, i.e. this year on 1 October. This text, the adoption of which is expected to be very delicate in a context of the absence of a majority in the National Assembly, must also first be presented to the Council of Ministers and have received the opinions of the High Council of Public Finances and the Council of State.
Although it is “too early” to announce a 2025 deficit forecast – the government’s last forecast was 4.1% – this preliminary budget is part of “a trajectory that allows us to respect 3% in 2027”, insists Matignon.
To ensure this “zero value” budget, that is to say renewed without increase, “budgets (of the ministries) will be stable and will have to absorb the increase in inflation, and savings will be made, particularly on the budget for work and employment, because there is a drop in unemployment and because systems could be reformed, such as those for apprenticeships which also represent more than twenty billion and will be the subject of a reform to make them more effective and more economical”, they explain on rue de Varenne. As for budgetary savings, a stable budget with a hypothesis of 2% inflation “represents for the ministries around ten billion in necessary savings”.
France, which like six other countries is the target of a European Union procedure for excessive deficit, must also present its medium-term plan to get back on track by September 20.