Statements “adventurous”, “wait and see”, “inaction”, “double speak”, “short-sighted calculations”, “irresponsibility”, “collective denial”, “unconsciousness”… The report delivered on Tuesday, November 19 by the senators of the Finance Commission on the deterioration of public accounts since October 2023 is not euphemistic.
Tasked with analyzing the deviation observed in recent months, the mission headed by the two leaders of the commission, Claude Raynal (Socialist Party, Haute Garonne) and Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains, Meurthe-et-Moselle), gave rise to a conclusion in the form of a verdict. Beyond obvious errors in forecasting, the current crisis is largely due, according to the senators, to a series of erroneous political decisions made by Macronist leaders. Stunned, they decided to react immediately. A joint press conference by Bruno Le Maire, Gabriel Attal, Elisabeth Borne and Thomas Cazenave is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
At the center of the questions, an unprecedented slip. In 2023, the public deficit had already proven to be more enormous than expected, at 5.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) instead of the expected 4.4%. “A mistake like this cannot be repeated twice.”Bruno Le Maire, then Minister of the Economy, had promised. Omitted. In 2024, the deficit that was expected to return to 4.4% of GDP is likely to reach at least 6.1%. A new discrepancy of around 50 billion euros.
“A form of budgetary unconsciousness”
During their hearings, Bruno Le Maire and his Budget Minister, Thomas Cazenave, defended themselves similarly, as did successive prime ministers, Elisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal. According to them, the” hurricane “ The budget is 75% or 80% linked to an erroneous assessment of income from Bercy’s services, an assessment over which they claim to have had no say. As soon as the magnitude of the problem became clear, everyone said they reacted quickly and decisively.
A version contradicted by the Senate. As in Crime on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie, all suspects bear their share of responsibility, according to the report. The Bercy technicians? Of course, they did not fully anticipate how tax revenues would evolve with growth. After two fiscal years 2021 and 2022 in which money reached the coffers better than expected, “a form of budgetary unconsciousness” It undoubtedly led them to overestimate the following recipes. In total, by 2024 they should be 41.5 billion euros lower than the initial forecasts, which effectively explains around 80% of the unexpected deficit.
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