There is overweight and obesity. When your doctor tells you that your ideal weight is around 60 kilos and that you strive to exceed 110 kilos, you are certainly close to severe obesity: it is urgent to act. Our State, as expensive as it is fat, enters the consultation room of the National Assembly this week, with a debt exceeding 110%. There are not 36 remedies to lose weight: budgetary doctors, at least the serious ones, know this. It’s time to diet, after decades of excess.
Professor Laurent Saint-Martin, responsible for presenting to parliamentarians the bitter brew that will be administered to the country, is well aware of this: the needle on the scale will not move as long as public spending does not decline. At best, the approximately 20 billion euros in taxes envisaged will bring a little “freshness” to our gluttonous State, but it is this insatiable appetite that must be calmed.
One in five workers works for the public service
Less government, less public money, fewer civil servants. With 5.7 million public employees, France is located just behind the Scandinavian States in the OECD ranking: more than 1 in 5 workers today work for the civil service in France, with salaries rising amounting to 12.4% of GDP. Is this reasonable? No, not from a financial point of view. Is this useful? No, given the low level of confidence of the French in their public services. Is it reversible? Yes, see the examples of Canada or Portugal. Two countries which, in the grip of serious crises in their public finances, adopted drastic measures in the 1990s for the first and in the 2010s for the second. Cuts in the workforce, early departures, non-replacement of retirements, increase in working hours… The range of measures made it possible to obtain rapid results: reduction of 5% of the federal public service in Canada in four years , restoration of public accounts in Portugal, with a debt rate falling from 130% to less than 100% in ten years.
Is France, which hired 178,000 public employees during Emmanuel Macron’s first mandate – the candidate had committed to eliminating 120,000 positions – capable of such a slimming cure? No doubt, provided it is included in a framework. Before taking out the scissors, the Canadian government of Jean Chrétien reviewed public programs, asking several questions: can an actor other than the public sector do better? Do we have the means to continue like this? Are these public programs still relevant? “This reform was a success because it was marked out, public opinion was ready, and the head of government Jean Chrétien, former Minister of Finance, knew how to do it,” reports Geneviève Tellier, professor at the School of Political Studies from the University of Ottawa. Not sure that France meets all these conditions, but the time for the obese state seems to have come.