“Doing a lot with little starting from almost nothing.” By summoning General de Gaulle to present his general policy speech, Michel Barnier set the tone for his tenure at Matignon, whatever its duration. Voluntarism, modesty, and realism are supposed to guide government action for better or worse. While the best remains at this very hypothetical stage, the Prime Minister must urgently address the worst. France ended up trapped in its budgetary incoherence. The boat fills with water from all sides and it is Michel Barnier who is responsible for rescuing it.
For a government, it is common to systematically blame problems on the management of its predecessors. For Michel Barnier this is not easy, as is obvious, he did not hesitate to point this out to Gabriel Attal when he questioned him at the end of his speech. From denials to omissions, from short-sighted electoral calculations to a demonstrated lack of discernment, Emmanuel Macron, Bruno Le Maire and the short-lived former prime minister have allowed the catastrophe to grow in the shadows. It is this trio that has put the country into an unprecedented budget slump.
This year, the public deficit will exceed 6% of GDP. In autumn 2023, during the vote on the 2024 finance law, the Minister of Economy promised to reduce it to 4.4%. In just a few months, the failure to foresee lower tax revenues became an industrial accident.
Orphan cries
This simple observation should call the outgoing majority to great humility. But instead of offering their good offices to try to rectify the situation, their leaders camp on “red lines” disconnected from reality, responding only to political positions to prepare for the next electoral event. “At the moment, the announced budget seems unacceptable to me.” decided the former interior minister Gérald Darmanin, announcing a plan of 60 billion euros of efforts on public accounts, including a third of tax increases, swore that he would not vote for them. Gabriel Attal asks “The choice of savings instead of the choice of taxes”. But this forgets that if spending had fallen in recent years, today we would not be forced to look for new income.
While on the left we cry for austerity, on the right we criticize the return of tax confiscation. Suddenly, everyone claims to have the infallible solution to an issue that until now everyone had magnificently ignored.
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