2023-09-27 06:08:09
For climate experts, the 7 billion euros in additional credits allocated to the ecological transition in the 2024 budget are real progress towards a “green budget”. “A significant increase”, observes Erwann Kerrand, industry and state budget project manager, at the Institute of Economics for Climate (I4CE), recalling that “only the post-Covid recovery plan had seen a comparable increase in spending”.
But will this be enough when, according to the Pisani-Ferry-Mahfouz report, additional expenditure linked to the transition must increase from 10 to 30 billion euros per year by 2030? For Damien Demailly, deputy director of I4CE, if the first step can be financed this year by the extinction of the energy tariff shield, find budgetary resources “will be a little more difficult in the following years”.
By tackling brown tax loopholes (for example the tax advantage on non-road diesel), the State will be able to count on 1.3 billion euros in additional revenue in 2024, and up to 2.3 billion in 2030. “But these niches will be compensated by accompanying measures, while the increase in climate spending is more significant,” notes Erwann Kerrand for whom “the debate on closing the budget remains open”.
“We are going to put in place territorial green budgets”
While the State must get out of debt (read below), the concern relates in particular to local authorities who will have to find an additional 6.5 billion each year between now and 2030 to finance their transition. However, to cope with inflation, they have already had to draw on their savings this year. “But they have the capacity to invest: there is cash flow and good borrowing possibilities,” assures Christophe Jerretie, president of the local finance steering committee of La Banque Postale. For him, communities can cope, provided that the State maintains the effort included in the 2024 budget to “a level never reached”, according to the expert.
But will it be sustainable? “As soon as the State makes the transition a priority, visibility is needed,” insists Luc Alain Vervisch, director of studies at La Banque Postale, recalling the example of subsidized jobs from which the State had withdrawn for budgetary reasons. “In terms of transition, it must guarantee the rules of the game in the long term,” insists this great specialist in local finances.
Monday, before the Ecological Planning Council, Emmanuel Macron was more or less committed to this, in particular through future State-region plan contracts. “We are going to put in place territorial green budgets, with real freedom of action, but at the same time clear objectives and shared responsibilities at the territorial level,” he explained, emphasizing that if “the mesh will be regional”, “each living area will be empowered”. “There will be very fine declination work”, assures the Élysée.
“To have ecological planning, you need budgetary planning”
The oppositions regret the absence of long-term budgetary programming. « We cannot decarbonize without a plan, or especially withouts financing”, regrets the deputy Les Républicains de la Loire Antoine Vermorel-Marques who pleaded for a programming law specific to the ecological transition, comparable to that of defense. “A way of sanctifying the evolution of financing for the transition”, agrees environmentalist MP Éva Sas.
If the government rejects this option today, it, during the discussion of the 2023-2027 public finance programming law, supported on Monday a Renaissance amendment obliging the government to transmit each year to Parliament “a multi-year strategy which defines financing for the ecological transition and national energy policy”.
“To have ecological planning, you need budgetary planning, pleads its author, the Paris deputy David Amiel. This amendment is a guarantee for stakeholders who need to plan for the medium and long term. Rather than a law passed for five years, and without binding nature, this will allow us to adjust funding each year based on the assessment of environmental challenges. »
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The public finance programming law adopted in committee
The National Assembly adopted, Monday September 25 in committee, the new version of the public finance programming law 2023-2027. The vote in session, scheduled for Wednesday, will nevertheless be close. The government hopes to have the text adopted – which takes into account the public debt reduction trajectory desired by the senatorial right – thanks to the abstention of the Republicans. The High Council of Public Finances, for its part, judged “unambitious” the government trajectory based on growth hypotheses “optimistic”.
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