“We’re going to start preparing [le budget 2026] As of tomorrow, on Monday, “said this Sunday, February 9, the Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard. The tenant of Bercy wishes to prepare this budget “With the time that we missed for the 2025 budget,” he said during an interview with the Grand Jury, a program organized by RTL/M6/Le Figaro/Public Senate.
Objective in particular: to adjust systems that weigh on businesses or high incomes. “Industrialists, for example, tell us that the 1.6 billion increase in charges (planned in the 2025 budget) weighs much more on industry than on other activities. We will work there,” said Eric Lombard . “In the text we have inherited, there was also an increase in what is called ‘flat tax’ on capital gains and dividends which, for people with the highest income, was mounted to 37.2 %.
The Minister also confirmed that the surcharge on large companies established in the 2025 budget, which aroused the criticisms of many bosses seeing a tax overflow, “would not apply next year”. The corporate tax as such “seems to me at a competitive level”, he said.
“Unpublished steering tools” to avoid slippage
François Bayrou’s government wants to reduce the public deficit to 5.4 % of GDP in 2025, compared to around 6 % in 2024. “Most of the deficits […] comes from retirement and health, “noted Eric Lombard, and it is not on the pension side” that we will find the savings “, he said. On health accounts,” There is work that should be done with professionals, “he said without giving more details. It also mentioned possible expense reductions on the side of local authorities and state programs outside of those related to defense, justice and security.
Éric Lombard has also promised the implementation of “unpublished budgetary management tools”, to respect this forecast of 5.4 % of deficit GDP. In particular, it will be a question of bringing together “those responsible for public spending every month in order to verify that the framing of public expenditure is respected,” he said. However, the Minister did not give more details. “Piloting expenses” will be “very strictly”, he said.
Contacted by AFP, a spokesperson for the Minister said that “work” was “still in progress” to develop these tools, and that “concrete proposals will be submitted to the Prime Minister” when they are ready.
A deficit of 4.6 % in 2026?
The government wants to avoid reiterating a scenario of the budget skid, as in 2024. Initially planned at 4.4 % of the gross domestic product (GDP), the public deficit had finally increased over the year to establish itself to 6.1 %, a figure that must be confirmed at the end of March.
For this year, “5.4 %, this is really the maximum that we can do. We cannot accept that there is a new slip of public finances during this year”, warned Pierre Moscovici, president of the Court of Auditors, during an interview on France Inter/France Info/The world.
Transmitted last October to the European Commission, the France’s budgetary and structural plan (PSMT) of France now provides for a public deficit of 4.6 % of GDP in 2026, which must be reduced to 2.8 % in 2029. The objective is maintained to bring it back in 2029 under the maximum threshold of 3 % authorized by European rules.