Will the speech this time be followed by effects? After criticism from the Court of Auditors on the release of “whatever the cost” which is slow to materialize, Bruno Le Maire intends to prove that his hand is not shaking on the subject. The Minister of the Economy thus promised on Monday “several billion euros in savings” for the 2024 budget, claiming to have in the sights “social expenditure, ‘brown’ expenditure and aid to businesses”.
“We will have public finance meetings before the summer which will allow us to present a global strategy and to have a finance bill for 2024 which will present several billion savings”, assured the tenant of Bercy on Franceinfo.
Pressure from Brussels
Bruno Le Maire has been multiplying “alerts” on public accounts for several months, speaking of a France “to the nearest euro”. But the 2023 budget did not really concretize this speech, with a drift on the expenses noted during the examination of the text and few concrete savings. The urgency is however more pressing, while the European Commission promises a normalization of the budgetary rules next year. Last week, the first president of the Court of Auditors, Pierre Moscovici, also expressed his “concern” in view of the debt situation.
“I am ready to work with the Court of Auditors on the recovery of public finances”, replied Bruno Le Maire on Monday. A way of associating the institution with the review of public expenditure launched a few weeks ago by his ministry to identify savings measures.
Already, tracks seem to emerge. The minister thus mentioned “social spending, brown spending and aid to businesses”. “It’s about seeing if the French are getting their money’s worth. Are we satisfied with the management of the social state and can we do better? Is it consistent to maintain aid for fossil fuels “when we want to promote climate transition, he wondered.
“It is not a question of cutting but of having a public expenditure which increases more slowly than growth”, specified the tenant of Bercy, who says he also wants to “include local authorities in this debate”.
A new method
The translation into action, however, promises to be difficult. In 2019, Bruno Le Maire had already announced that he wanted to cut into business aid for 5 billion euros, before giving up. Last week, the working group set up by Bercy for the green industry bill indicated that it considered it counterproductive to attack “brown” tax credits now.
Faced with these obstacles, the solution for Bruno Le Maire seems to go through a new method with stronger political support. After the presentation of the stability program in mid-April, there will be “a government seminar around the Prime Minister on the reduction of public spending, so that each minister feels concerned and does what is necessary in his administration”. Next will come by the summer of the Public Finance Conference, which will therefore make it possible to unveil savings measures for the finance bill for 2024.
This budget should mark a first inflection for public spending, which should represent 56.9% of GDP at the end of 2023. “I want to reduce this figure to 54% by 2027, to bring us closer to the European average which is %”, reaffirmed Bruno Le Maire. During the previous five-year term, Emmanuel Macron had already promised to reduce the level of public spending by 3 points of GDP, before giving up. If it succeeded this time, it would only return to the level of 2019, before the Covid crisis, i.e. a threshold still higher by 1.8 points than that of 2008, before the financial crisis.
