This is an outing that did not please some of his parliamentary colleagues. The deputy together for the Republic (EPR) Mathieu Lefèvre, co-rapporteur of the commission of inquiry on the slip of the public deficit, aroused the ire of several of his colleagues for having given his opinion on the causes of the degraded budgetary situation of France. During a press conference Tuesday, March 25, the elected official therefore declared that this context was the result of a “heavy technical error” linked to the calculation of the forecast of revenue by the administration, and not of a “political” fault.
“There is no corpse in the budgetary closet of France,” assured Mathieu Lefèvre. “There was an error in revenue assessment which is major, of the order of 60 billion euros – 20 billion euros in 2023, 40 billion euros in 2024.” According to him, poor calculation only on Bercy services. “It is not a political error insofar as the tax revenue is not the subject of political arbitration.” This vision is also that defended by the former Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire. In November, the former official had promised before the senators that no “concealment” had taken place to hide the state of French finances.
“Macronie small telegraphist methods,” says Eric Ciotti
The public deficit should reach 6 % of GDP in 2024, after a first slip at 5.5 % last year, according to INSEE figures. Mathieu Lefèvre, who said he speaned down during his speech, judges that “the political reaction of the governments that succeeded each other in 2023 and 2024 was (…) appropriate”. His recommendation? Entrust the mission of the calculation of the forecast of revenue to an independent organization, the High Council for Public Finance. In total, around thirty hearings of Bercy politicians and administrations, including Bruno Le Maire, have been carried out in recent months by the commission of inquiry.
The other co-rapporteur of this mission, Eric Ciotti, strongly criticized Mathieu Lefèvre’s approach. The deputy UDR criticizes the macronist for having communicated his own reading of the facts, while the commission of inquiry has not yet rendered its conclusions. “By publishing his pseudo-conclusions of the report of the commission of inquiry on the drift of public accounts, Mathieu Lefèvre contravenes the most basic rules of our Parliament,” criticized the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes on his X account. “I condemn these methods of small telegraphist of Macronie, who only seek to minimize the responsibilities of certain policies.”
On the other side of the political spectrum, the president of the finance committee in the National Assembly Eric Coquerel also castigated the initiative of his colleague Mathieu Lefèvre. His remarks “devalue the commission of inquiry” on the slip of the deficit which must make its conclusions on April 9 or 10, regretted the elected representative of Seine-Saint-Denis, interviewed by AFP. “It is not a use, and we can consider that there are rules that have been flouted.” The deputy Charles de Courson (Liot), rapporteur of the finance committee and also a member of the committee of inquiry, was to present this Wednesday his contribution to the work of the Commission.