Elisabeth Borne responded to the barrage of questions from senators. The former Prime Minister admitted, this Friday, November 15, to having been “alerted” at the end of 2023 by a note from Bercy on the “critical nature” of the budgetary situation, but considered having “taken (her) part” in controlling public accounts.
Heard in the Senate as part of an information mission on the drift in public accounts, the former tenant of Matignon was notably called upon to explain the explosion of the deficit, which will reach 6.1% of GDP in 2024, compared to the 4.4% initially planned in the state budget that she herself presented in the fall of 2023.
“Traditionally, what is expected of the government is that it takes measures to control spending. I think I have largely taken my share of this,” said the Renaissance MP from Calvados. “It is not for pleasure that we are carrying out three unemployment insurance reforms. It is not for pleasure that we are carrying out a pension reform which we cannot say was extremely popular,” she added.
The embarrassing note
The senators also questioned her about an internal note sent by her Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire on December 13, 2023, which recommended that she “share widely the critical nature of (the) budgetary situation, both within the government but also in public opinion.
Elisabeth Borne confirmed the existence and content of this letter, which she described as an “alert”. These were “first indications” of a possible slippage in state revenue, “but without us being able, at that time, to know what the order of magnitude was”, he said. -she hammered. “There is not an alarm signal, neither addressed to the Minister of the Economy, nor that the Minister of the Economy would have transmitted to me at the time”, evacuated Elisabeth Borne.
The general budget rapporteur in the Senate, Jean-François Husson (LR), expressed his “astonishment” at these responses. “We were told at the time that we shouldn’t worry. And the same people who told us that are writing to you saying ‘Be careful, there is a critical situation'”, he regretted. “We have the feeling afterwards that there is not enough awareness to match the alert.”
“I don’t know what we can do when we are faced with information of this type. We don’t know if we are talking about a revenue gap of a billion or 10 billion, or even ultimately, as we will learn much later, 20 billion”, justified the former Prime Minister. She also seemed to place part of the responsibility on Bruno Le Maire. “In general, when we are faced with a very alarming situation, the Minister (of the Economy) comes to meet the Prime Minister,” she noted, but this was only the case “on January 4” 2024. She also noted that at the time, “most of (her) energy was mobilized” in “the search for a compromise on the immigration law” and not on public finances.
The Senate, which notably interviewed Bruno Le Maire and Gabriel Attal as part of this fact-finding mission, will deliver its conclusions in the coming days, before the launch of a commission of inquiry on the same subject in the National Assembly .