(Finance) – After the early elections, another piece of news not reassuring for the France which – as well as Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia – ends up under EU procedure for excessive deficit. Brussels recommends Paris “to act in 2024 and 2025”, “timely” presenting its “medium-term structural fiscal plan” with the aim of “limiting the growth of net spending”, directing “public debt on a plausibly downward trajectory” and proceeding with “a reduction of the public deficit” towards the 3% target.
In 2023 the France saw its deficit rise to 5.5% of GDP, the fourth highest value in the Union after Italy (7.4%), Hungary (6.7%) and Romania (6.6%). Its public debt stood at 110.6%.
In the specific recommendations, the EU Commission asks Paris to “reduce the complexity of the tax system by better directing fiscal expenditure”, set “quantitative savings objectives” and “continue with the rapid and effective implementation of the Pnrr, ensuring the completion of reforms and investments by August 2026”.
And the Minister of Economy spoke today about the infringement procedure against Italy Giorgetti defined it as “widely expected news, moreover with the boom in deficit induced by the exceptional measures we certainly couldn’t think of staying below 3%”.
“We have a path that we started with the beginning of the activity of the government of responsibility and of sustainable public finance which is appreciated by the market and the European institutions and we will continue like this. So it’s nothing surprising,” she concluded.