A spare wheel while waiting for a budget: the National Assembly unanimously adopted the “special law” on Monday, December 16, authorizing the executive to levy taxes and borrow to finance the State and Social Security, MPs are already planning on the budgetary standoff after the holidays. Tabled in reaction to Michel Barnier’s censorship and the political impasse which prevented the adoption of a budget for 2025, the text, which will be examined on Wednesday in the Senate, was adopted by all 481 voting deputies.
A rare concord accompanied by controversy. Most opposition parties deplored the fact that the President of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, declared the amendments to index the income tax scale to inflation inadmissible. The holder of the perch relied in particular on an opinion from the Council of State. For the latter, the text was not the appropriate vehicle for this indexation, which would take the special law out of its scope of renewal of existing taxes.
But opposition deputies contest it, believing that it was better to let the Constitutional Council decide once the law has been adopted. “The macronie has decided to make the French pay for censorship,” criticized the vice-president of the Assembly Clémence Guetté (LFI) on X. “I decide by law, not according to my political interest, you should perhaps think about it,” retorted Yaël Braun-Pivet. Because beyond the legal, a political battle is being played out on “the censorship bill”, hammered out from the podium by Véronique Louwagie (Republican Right). In the absence of indexation “380,000 new households” could ultimately find themselves taxable, according to the resigning Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin. The situation could, however, be corrected in a draft budget or another text at the start of 2025, especially since the taxpayers concerned would not enter the tax scope from January 1, but later in the year. ‘year.
New debates at the start of the year
In the meantime, the State will operate with this special law, the main article of which allows the executive to raise taxes on the basis of those voted last year for 2024. The executive will then be able to incur expenses by decree, but will have to be satisfied with the “minimum of credits” which it “deems essential to continue the execution of public services”. The deputies also adopted an amendment to include in the text the levies on state revenue for the benefit of communities.
“To the great despair of the crows of doom of the macronie and the macronized right. There will therefore be no shutdown” with censorship, launched Jean-Philippe Tanguy (RN). The government will however “not be able to increase”, beyond “the strict minimum”, the budgets of certain ministries which had to be revalued, argued Laurent Saint-Martin , taking the example of “the Armies, Justice (and) the Interior”. And the executive will not be able to make “new investments”, “unless necessary for the continuity of national life or for reasons of marked emergency”, he explained. “Aid to Mayotte”, heavily hit by Cyclone Chido, “will be made possible”, he assured.
Then task the future government of François Bayrou with passing real budgetary texts for 2025, avoiding censorship. Eric Coquerel, LFI president of the Finance Committee, promised to oppose “any austerity budget”. Noting that “the adoption (of the 2025 budget) will not take place for several months”, the general budget rapporteur Charles de Courson (centrist) and Eric Coquerel asked the Prime Minister for tax provisions to quickly come into force ” consensus” and “urgent(ies)”. In their viewfinder in particular “the extension of taxes and tax credits” expiring on December 31, “the tax and social exemption of tips (…), the indexation on inflation of the tax scale on income, the extension of the zero-interest loan” and certain “provisions in favor of farmers”. They ask that a bill including these measures be debated “as soon as work resumes” in the Assembly on January 13.