Wednesday March 20 in the evening: panic dinner at the Elysée. A deficit of more than 5% of GDP is now expected for 2023. A gaping hole greater than the 173.3 billion announced in January. Bruno Le Maire, but also the Court of Auditors, the IMF, the European Commission, the rating agencies have continued for two years to sound the alarm in the general Macronian indifference. But this time, it was no longer possible to hide this unforgivable reality. With growth much weaker than expected, the explosion in interest rates which will weigh on the cost of debt and the accumulation of spending promises, the year 2024 promises to be catastrophic on the budgetary level. And in the emergency, without any qualms, Emmanuel Macron immediately found the solution: local authorities will pay!
This is the decision that the incapable State intends to take to have its negligence financed by others. Yes, the incapable State! Incapable of reducing its personnel costs by reforming the civil service nor of saying no to the slightest discontent by favoring the check policy. Incapable of initiating the slightest structural reform as it is consumed by political and union taboos. The taboo of 30 hours in the civil service, the taboo of lifelong employment, the taboo of spending better rather than spending more, etc.
But the incapable State is also one which never assumes its responsibilities and never recognizes that it was wrong even though it has made major strategic errors whose cost for public finances has been gigantic. . Energy, with nuclear stop-and-go and the colossal debt accumulated by EDF. The railway with the fiasco of the SNCF and infrastructure management. Without forgetting National Education and its painful results for the level of our students.
But the incapable State is also the one which, due to lack of rigor, multiplies budgetary absurdities. One example among others: 400 million euros wasted on a “computerized human resources management system for National Education” which was never deployed.
Looting of local budgets
And the State will continue its path of indignity by paying for itself from local authorities, that is to say essentially the cities which carry the Republic and democratic efficiency on a daily basis. The cities from which most of the tax revenues have been eliminated (professional tax under Sarkozy, housing tax under Macron) to replace them with constantly reduced state subsidies. Cities that are drowning in compulsory spending. Thus, when Macron revalued the remuneration point of the state civil service in 2023, local authorities were forced to align for their own civil servants. Without forgetting the countless standards to which they must comply without any consideration of the financial consequences. Cities which, when they are well managed, pay for others and will have to give up investments that bring growth to finance the negligence of the State.
This second presidential term passes, with a series of disappointments and uncertainties, embodying more than ever public impotence and the failure of governments supposed to protect the Republic. We say it in every tone: it is a boulevard for extremist parties joined every week by new personalities thinking of finding a new path or a new existence there.
While we will have to work on an alternative program to post-Macronism, we will have to rely on the last pillars of public efficiency. Cities must be on condition that they drastically correct the complexity of our local system. The distance from Paris is such that the effectiveness of proximity in areas as essential as infrastructure, economic and social policies, but also security and education will have to be the subject of an assumed movement of decentralization. We must do everything to prevent the looting of local budgets planned by the State from making things irreversible between now and then.
Jean-François Copé, former minister and LR mayor of Meaux.
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