A call for a start. During a speech at Paris Dauphine University, this Thursday, March 28, the governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, estimated that the slippage of the public deficit in 2023 made it necessary to take care “finally seriously of expenditure ” public. “For fifteen years now, our country and its successive governments have not kept their multi-year commitments to recover” public accounts, he lamented.
The deterioration of the public deficit in 2023, which reached 5.5% of GDP instead of the 4.9% initially planned by the government, “does not mean the bankruptcy of France”, he tempered, but it calls for an “imperative”. Ten billion euros of savings have already been made for 2024, and 20 billion cuts are announced for 2025.
But “additional savings” will be necessary, according to the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire. Despite the slippage in 2023, the government maintained its objective of reducing the public deficit below 3% of GDP in 2027, as promised to its European partners.
A new increase in 2024?
“I deeply believe in the European social model but it costs us in France around ten points of GDP more than our European neighbors: 58 against 48 as a percentage of GDP,” warned the governor of the Bank of France. And to continue: public spending in volume “could further increase by more than 2% in 2024”, according to projections from the Court of Auditors.
For François Villeroy de Galhau, “it is high time, not to decree austerity and a general reduction in spending, but to achieve this general stabilization in volume.” This objective presupposes an “effort of prioritization and efficiency”, which must be “fair and shared by all: the State, but also local authorities and social benefits”.
Parliamentarians from the majority and the opposition were invited this Thursday to the Ministry of the Economy and Finance to propose savings options. In order to subsequently seek other avenues within local authorities, a second meeting in Bercy is announced for April 9.