The tax issue should not be taboo, Pierre Moscovici tells us in The Parisian. The first president of the Court of Auditors is right: when there is an emergency – and there is an absolute emergency to redress the calamitous situation of the country’s public finances – no subject is taboo. Especially not that of public spending, for too long considered a forbidden debate. The simple fact of mentioning savings makes you seem like an ultra-liberal, ready to sacrifice public services on the altar of profitability. You only have to listen to the chorus of experts from the New Popular Front or the refrain of the new social bards of the National Rally to understand that the ground is mined. For want of looking French reality (and the state of our coffers) in the face.
“We are on the ‘public spending podium’, warned Didier Migaud, Pierre Moscovici’s predecessor at the Court of Auditors, in 2019. The venerable institution may have been ringing its bells in all directions for years, but our political leaders, led by Emmanuel Macron, don’t care. Because five years later, France not only still occupies the same place on the public spending podium, but it is also number 1 for compulsory deductions – which considerably limits the room for maneuver for tax increases – and above all it is widening the gap with its partners. In 2023, its public spending reached nearly 57.3% of French GDP, when the European average does not exceed 50%. Much less expensive, the German ant displays a rate of 48.6%.
In fact, the tricolor cicada has been spending without counting for years. Yellow vests, Covid, inflation, strikes… With each new crisis, the government takes out its checkbook. In this game, which Bruno le Maire has indulged in without counting for seven years – it should be noted that the Ministers of Finance only become surprisingly virtuous when leaving Bercy – France wins all the medals: a document published by Eurostat and comparing the breakdown of public spending by function shows that France almost always outperforms its neighbors. Health, pensions (a quarter of our public spending!), unemployment protection, housing, education: we are the most generous.
Is this choice, which is fueling the deficit, the debt and now the country’s loss of credibility, at least paying off for the French? Because with this windfall of money, one might imagine that our public services would be the envy of the entire world. But this is not the case. This is evidenced by the dashboard of satisfaction with public services, concocted by the OECD (Panorama of Public Services, 2023), which, with precise criteria (accessibility, responsiveness, quality, etc.), evaluates the different countries. France, unfortunately, not only is rarely on the top step of the podium, but most often in the middle of the table. What if we changed our method, by showing that we too can do better with less? This is not a wish, but a necessity.
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