A final blow to try to limit the public deficit in 2024. With less than two months to go until the end of the year, the government is determined to take new economic measures related to the current year. This is, in part, the objective of the end of administration bill examined on Wednesday, November 6 by the Council of Ministers and immediately transmitted to Parliament, which plans to examine it in session starting on November 19.
Despite the magnitude of the text (187 pages with annexes) and the lack of a majority in the National Assembly, the government is committed to a very rapid approval of this bill. “It is necessary that it be enacted at the beginning of December because, along with the cancellations, it also opens up new credits, in particular to guarantee the salaries of civil servants or finance military support to Ukraine,” we indicate in Bercy.
Despite the diversion of public accounts, the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, chose not to present to Parliament a real amending finance law, which would have allowed emergency fiscal measures to be taken, applicable from 2024. Otherwise, the end of management law, a new type of law created in 2021, allows for some late savings. In this context, the State intends to definitively cancel 5.6 billion euros of credits already voted. These are mainly funds that Gabriel Attal had already temporarily frozen during the summer when he was in Matignon. All ministries, or almost, are worried.
Unavoidable expenses
“With these cancellations we are going to the maximum of what is technically possible.” assures World Laurent Saint-Martin, Minister of Budget. A response to those, especially among Macronists, who suspect that the new government is tarnishing the public accounts for 2024, to concentrate its recovery efforts in 2025.
At the beginning of the year, when the first signs of budgetary deviation were confirmed, the Government had already canceled credits worth 10,000 million euros. Then 16 billion euros were put “in reserve” after the dissolution of the Assembly. “Today it is not possible to cancel this entire reserve, but between what is canceled and what is postponed until 2025, three quarters of these 16 billion will not be consumed in 2024,” underlines Bercy, who interprets this as a sign of the Barnier team’s desire to save money.
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