The budget, heads. In the weeks leading up to the dissolution, Emmanuel Macron raised the issue with a few interlocutors. In the fall, when it will be time to tighten their belts, all the parties, particularly in the National Assembly, will come down on the government with all their might, right? Censorship would become inevitable. Is it because he is looking for arguments that will justify his decision to send the deputies back to the voters that the president is raising the issue? Will it soon be a way to post-rationalize a decision that will have left everyone speechless? Or is he really convinced that he is heading for a brick wall?
When he talks about it with Bruno Le Maire, here is the great treasurer who makes him hear a different side of the story. Censorship? He doesn’t believe it. He tells the head of state that he had a disagreement with Eric Ciotti: the president of LR had a real red line, the deindexation of pensions. The government withdrew it, and it paid the price for it. It was well worth it when you know what happened next…
It’s impossible to pull off a stunt to impress the gallery
The budget, one side. This is a regular interlocutor of Emmanuel Macron who notes: “He is like the other presidents of the Republic, deep down he doesn’t care.” It is curious, among our heads of state, this need to turn a blind eye. To pretend. The law is the most powerful school of imagination, said Giraudoux, and the Elysée, yesterday as today, knows how to adapt it to the needs of the day. The problem with the budget is that it imposes itself in its reality on political leaders. It is impossible to pull off a stunt to impress the gallery. No more playing. It is easier not to have a Prime Minister than not to have a budget…
In this area, moreover, the position often makes the man. Take Aurélien Rousseau. When he headed Elisabeth Borne’s office at Matignon, he rubbed Stanislas Guerini, Minister of the Civil Service, with a slap in the face when he wanted to obtain an increase in the index point for civil servants. He displayed such zeal that once he was appointed Minister of Health, he apologized to Guerini. Today, Rousseau is an NFP MP, whose program is to increase the basic salary by 10%. On the contrary, the truth is slower to emerge. Lucie Castets believes she is getting closer to power. On August 19, on BFMTV, she expressed her indignation twice: “There will be a shortage of 15,000 doctors by the start of the school year.” The journalist corrected her: “Not 15,000, but 1,500.” She is not averse to a zero: “My bad!” The formula says it all, welcome to the game of numbers and letters. The NFP program would be costly for public finances, with in particular the repeal of the pension reform and “the restoration of public services”. The increase in revenue would come from an increase in taxes – “reinforced ISF” and reform of the income tax scale.
Emmanuel Macron presses the button
On May 27, 2024, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra is in Thomas Cazenave’s office. The Minister of Sports opens the ball of consultations led by her colleague from Public Accounts to prepare the 2025 finance bill (PLF). Except that it’s for fun. Or for nothing. Less than two weeks later, while all the ministers have not yet started their traditional discussions, Emmanuel Macron presses the button. This dissolution impacts the construction of the budget like no other before it.
August, month of doubts. At the Elysée, the president procrastinates, a house specialty. At Matignon, the Prime Minister is a ghost. At Bercy, the living dead wear suits. The PLF is being prepared, or rather, it is pretending. And in Parliament, there is no more divisive issue than this one, with, for example, tax choices. The outline of a coalition is rarely done without some additional costs. When it comes to public finances, the National Assembly is not necessarily the place of wisdom. In 1958, it was to avoid the shortcomings of parliamentarians, who are generally quicker to spend than to save, that Article 47 of the Constitution was thought up, which has become relevant again today: “If the finance law setting the resources and charges for a financial year has not been filed in time to be promulgated before the start of that financial year, the government shall urgently request authorization from Parliament to collect taxes and shall open by decree the credits relating to the services voted.”
The budget doesn’t wait
Because Emmanuel Macron can play with time, the budget does not wait. And the president’s power has withered. “The country’s urgent need is not to destroy what we have just done, but to build and move forward,” he assured on television on July 23. Except that he will not decide much. “From the moment the presidential camp has been defeated, it is up to the future Prime Minister and the future government to propose measures,” the Elysée recognizes. “This is not the place to go into detail or to draw up a budget program,” interrupted a left-wing guest on August 23, when the discussion provoked by the president turned to economic and financial choices. By September 20, France must also present its multi-year plan for restoring its accounts to the European Commission, as required by the recent reform of the Stability and Growth Pact.
The budget, heads or tails. The budget, match point. If it is the focus of all attention, it is because it will carry an unprecedented political weight this year. And it is by nature the opposite of the famous “text by text” majority vaunted here and there, since it presupposes a substantive agreement on all important subjects. The only motion of censure ever adopted since the beginning of the Fifth Republic, that of October 1962, did not concern budgetary questions, but it had a singularity: if the text led to the fall of the government, it was in reality aimed at the President of the Republic, General de Gaulle. A censure on the budget would not only overthrow the Prime Minister. It would weaken both France and the President.
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