A budgetary slippage which should not be confined to the year 2023. Bercy has unveiled its new trajectory of public finances for the coming years, with once again not encouraging forecasts. The executive now anticipates a public deficit of 5.1% of GDP for the year 2024, instead of 4.4% previously forecast, according to data from the new stability program communicated on Wednesday by the Ministry of the Economy and Finances, which still expects a return to 2.9% in 2027.
The high figure for the 2024 deficit is the consequence of the strong slippage recorded in 2023, where it reached 5.5% of GDP instead of the 4.9% forecast, due to revenues much lower than expected, Bercy recalled. The return below 3% in 2027 (after 4.1% in 2025 and 3.6% in 2026), demanded by Brussels, would be supported by growth of 1.4% in 2025, 1.7% in 2026 and 1 .8% in 2027, according to Bercy, which mentions “signs of recovery”.
As for the 10 billion euros that still need to be found this year, in addition to the 10 billion in savings on the state budget already announced in February, they could partially be found in “fairly significant reserves” ministries, according to Bercy. But local authorities, “like other stakeholders and other public authorities”, will also be asked to be “stakeholders in this recovery”, warned the ministry. Bercy described the new objectives announced on Wednesday as “ambitious but credible”.
The debt, for its part, would vary little between now and 2027 as a percentage of GDP, going from 112.3% this year to 112%, but the burden itself would soar, going from 46.3 billion euros. in 2024 to 72.3 billion in 2027.
Tensions between Bruno Le Maire and Emmanuel Macron
This announcement does not really surprise. Last week, on The Parliamentary Channel, the general budget rapporteur at the National Assembly, Jean-René Cazeneuve, had already judged it “very likely that the objective of 4.4% in 2024 is no longer the objective at all planned” in the new program.
In February, to urgently restore the situation, the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, announced ten billion euros in savings on the state budget this year: this is the maximum that could be cut by decree, without having to go through an amending finance law in Parliament.
According to newspaper information The echoes, confirmed to Agence France Presse, Bruno Le Maire sent several parliamentarians a message this weekend with a view to implementing such an amending finance law. But this initiative, assure The echoesgreatly displeased Emmanuel Macron and the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, who are not on this line.
But without being able to take more drastic saving measures than the 10 billion, it is logical that the deficit will be reduced very little this year, where growth is only expected at 1%. For 2025, the government has already announced 20 billion in savings across all three areas (State, social security, communities).
“Hidden plan”
The communities, for their part, seem largely recalcitrant to these new economies, and explained this Tuesday to Bruno Le Maire, during a meeting in Bercy, that they had already “given largely”. There is also still no question of increasing taxes to fill the hole, as Gabriel Attal and Bruno Le Maire repeated in unison on Tuesday during questions to the government in the National Assembly. “We do not want to increase taxes on the French, not to ‘give gifts to the rich’, but because fiscal stability allows businesses to invest, create jobs, and revive French economic power”, affirmed the Minister of Economy and Finance.
Gabriel Attal, however, launched last week a parliamentary “task force” responsible for making proposals to tax “rents”, a concept still to be defined. Enough to encourage part of the opposition to denounce the government’s double discourse. “We already know that the government lied […] for the 2024 budget, we have the feeling that he is still lying to us about the measures he intends to propose”, Olivier Marleix, president of the Les Républicains group in the National Assembly, said on Franceinfo on Wednesday.