During the presentation of the 2023 budget, Bruno Le Maire had hammered home that France was “to the nearest euro”. XOSE BOUZAS/Hans Lucas via AFP
DECRYPTION – Matignon should send a letter next week to each ministry, asking them to identify possible levers to reduce their spending by 5%.
To balance the accounts, the government pours into political fiction by making ministers floor on an imaginary scenario. “If your budget were to be reduced by 5%, what cuts would you make?“: this is the central question of the letter that the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, must address to each ministry, presumably within the next week. This dispatch should take place when Bercy transmits to the High Council of Public Finances its stability plan, the multi-annual budgetary programming required by the European authorities.
But this exercise will not have the value of a constraint, we are assured rue de Varenne. The question posed by the Prime Minister remains hypothetical. Indeed, 5% savings on all government expenditure would represent a colossal sum. Such a cut, applied to the 2023 budget (785 billion euros), amounts in absolute value to a skimming of more than 39 billion euros. Either an amount greater than the total…
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