The government detailed on Sunday October 27 5 billion euros in additional savings aimed in particular at development aid, culture, support systems for the greening of vehicles and even sick leave in the public service. These measures detailed by the offices of the Ministers of the Budget and the Civil Service will be taken by way of amendments to the 2025 finance bill and are part of the 60 billion euros effort decided as part of the budget to recover the accounts and reduce the deficit to 5% of GDP.
Of these 60 billion euros, 20 billion come from tax increases and 40 billion from spending reductions, including 20 billion for the State. Of these 20 billion euros, 15 billion were already earmarked in the 2025 budget projects for the State and social security, but there remained 5 billion euros to be detailed.
On this last total, the public service is called upon to contribute with 1.2 billion euros in expected savings via the increase in waiting days, which would increase to 3 days, compared to one day currently, and by capping at 90 % of remuneration for the first three months of ordinary sick leave, compared to 100% at present.
“This is an alignment with private practices,” underlined the office of the Minister of the Civil Service during an exchange with the press. “We base ourselves on an observation which is the sharp increase in absenteeism in the public service over the past ten years. In ten years, the number of days of absence has increased from 43 million days in 2014 to 77 million days in 2022, which represents an increase of almost 80%” argued the ministerial services.
Reduced spending on public broadcasting
More than half of these 5 billion additional savings, or 2.6 billion, come from the cancellation of a “significant” part of the precautionary reserve of almost all ministries and their operators. The Ministries of Defense, Interior, Justice, Higher Education and Overseas will not be affected.
Added to this is a block of 1 billion euros of “targeted savings” on public policies, including a 640 million euro reduction for development aid, a 55 million reduction for culture, in particular public audiovisual, and 300 million reduction on support systems for the greening of vehicles. On this last point, the envelope increases to 700 million euros instead of 1 billion, “it being specified that these 700 million euros will be supplemented by aid via energy saving certificates”, specified the offices.