He will have very little respite. While Gabriel Attal and his resigning team have been dealing with current affairs for seven weeks, the new tenant of Matignon, Michel Barnier, appointed by Emmanuel Macron on Thursday, September 5, will have to quickly tackle the many files waiting on his desk. One is particularly urgent: the budget. L’Express takes stock.
Budget priority
A legislative behemoth, the 2025 State budget must be submitted to Parliament by October 1 at the latest. To “ensure the continuity of the State”, the outgoing government has prepared a framework for its successor, by carrying over exactly the same total of credits as in 2024, i.e. 492 billion euros, but broken down differently.
Proposals that the future executive will be able to amend. But time is running out: without a government at the end of next week, we will “start to enter the red zone”, estimates an expert on the matter. And on Tuesday, September 3, the red alert was launched by Bercy on the state of the public deficit, which could rise to 6.2% in 2025 in the worst-case scenario.
The sick hospital
The preparation of the “Sécu” budget, whose deficit is growing, has also been delayed, while the health sector is suffering, between an underfunded public hospital and an emergency crisis.
Several projects aimed at reducing the medical desertification have been halted, such as a reform of the nursing profession, the experimentation of direct access to specialist doctors, or financial sanctions for patients who do not honor their appointments. The establishment of “assisted dying”, a campaign promise of Emmanuel Macron, is now on hold, after having already begun its journey in the Assembly. Everything will therefore have to be started from scratch, to the great displeasure of the associations.
Overseas on the table
The New Caledonian separatists are still demanding the formal repeal of the reform aimed at unfreezing the local electoral body. Voted in May, this text had set the “Caillou” ablaze: eleven people were killed and the economic fabric was destroyed. The dissolution of the National Assembly led to the suspension of the project, but also political discussions to break the deadlock. In the meantime, the economic and social crisis is worsening. The territory is on the verge of bankruptcy and is calling for national solidarity, but without a government in Paris to manage aid, it feels abandoned.
As for Mayotte, the Indian Ocean archipelago was waiting for two bills prepared by the outgoing executive: one to respond to the security, migration and health crises, the other to eliminate the right of the soil. However, this is an old fundamental principle, attacked many times. The National Rally (RN) proposes to restrict the right of the soil so that “only a child born to at least one French parent has automatic access to French nationality”.
Resuming the agriculture file
“Today, agriculture needs something other than dealing with current affairs, it needs decisions,” summed up Arnaud Rousseau, the head of the FNSEA, the main agricultural union, on Thursday. “The fire is smouldering in our countryside,” warns the Confédération paysanne. After the serious crisis this winter, the government had announced more than a billion euros of measures, ranging from emergency aid to guaranteed loans. But several bills intended to respond to the crisis were suspended by the dissolution.
In the short term, the unions are calling for emergency measures for cereal farmers affected by low yields, including the granting of subsidized loans (at preferential rates), and for livestock farmers affected by health diseases, with free vaccinations throughout the country.
Energy blur
The energy sector is waiting for decisions on investments in electricity production, a crucial issue for the entire economy and especially industry. In 2025 and beyond, will public money go to the construction of new nuclear reactors or to renewable energies? It is very unclear, as the revision of France’s Energy Program has been delayed by a year.
France nevertheless sent to Brussels on July 10 – almost on time – its National Energy Climate Plan, which was required before the end of June. But a decree is still awaited to implement the multi-year programming setting for 2035 the major objectives by type of energy and the National Low Carbon Strategy, a national roadmap to combat climate change.
Sébastien Treyer, the executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), considered that “a first good decision would be to cancel the cuts in funding from the Green Fund and Ademe, discovered in the latest budget documents of the resigning government”. “A number of urgent issues, such as the climate change adaptation plan, the low-carbon strategy or the laws on energy and agriculture have been left unfinished for months,” he lamented.
Wages and unemployment insurance
The dissolution also halted the process of negotiations between social partners through which the government wanted to tackle low wages and “de-micardise” France, as well as the sanctions which should have been applied from June against the dozen professional branches still having conventional minimums lower than the minimum wage.
Another suspended project is to tighten, from December, the conditions of access and the rules of compensation by unemployment insurance. In the meantime, the current rules have been extended until the end of October. There is also uncertainty regarding aid for apprenticeships: will the 6,000 euros per young person in initial training be maintained?