lCitizens learned, somewhat astonished, that the French State, already heavily indebted, was about to become literally over-indebted because, in the space of a year, the public deficit had increased from 4.4% to 6.1%. . The risk of a “Greek-style” disaster scenario, with state supervision by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, is no longer science fiction at all. The realization is brutal and explains why most of the debate over the current finance bill revolves around how to drastically reduce this budget hole to stop the deepening of French debt.
Given the magnitude of the damage, the deputies decided to open a commission of investigation, which was the minimum to do. This will be an opportunity to hear from those primarily responsible for this matter, excluding however the principally responsible, the President of the Republic, who, according to well-established practice, is authorized not to be accountable to Parliament. . Uniqueness of our constitutional system that means that the main political leader is politically irresponsible.
Even before these hearings, we began to understand that everyone will pass the buck to explain the inexplicable, that is, the astonishing gap between the budget forecasts of the Ministry of Economy and the reality of the deficit, a year later. From this point of view, the defensive position of Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Economy from 2017 to July 2024, already seems well established, if we believe the statements spread by the press. He says time and time again that he has continued to alert the government and the President of the Republic about the danger posed by the increase in debt. He would have done so the day after the first episode of the Covid-19 epidemic, alerting the Head of State about the dangers of the slogan of “at all costs”.
Unforgivable
But, above all, for the controversial period that has just passed, I would have tried to propose to the Government and the Head of State an amending finance bill (PFLR) to take into account the worsening situation. A law of this type became necessary due to existing texts that prohibited, given the amount of the debt, continuing to resort to a budget annulment decree used, in February, by the then Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal.
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