This is not the explosive audit issued at the start of Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, but it is, at the very least, a warning for his second term. In its report on the situation and outlook for public finances, made public on Thursday July 7, the Court of Auditors urges the executive to build a budgetary trajectory “credible” and better “to document” the associated economies, while taking the necessary measures to boost growth.
Unlike the 2017 audit, carried out at the request of the new head of state and which had caused an outcry among the socialists by judging “tainted with insincerity” the accounts of the Holland era, it is on the initiative of the Court that this report – drafted each year – was published. Its first president, Pierre Moscovici, was also annoyed in private to have to push him back, awaiting the revision by Bercy of the growth, debt and deficit targets for 2022, finally communicated last week.
Looking back over the past five years, the Court of Auditors underlines the budgetary blind spots of the government, which was to present on Thursday a bill on purchasing power accompanied by an amending finance bill (PLFR), multiplying the spending to protect the French against galloping inflation.
According to the magistrates, the first half of the five-year term was insufficiently used by the executive to restore public finances. And, after the sharp budgetary deterioration caused by the Covid-19 crisis and the implementation of “whatever the cost”, the deficit forecast for this year (5% of GDP) is still very uncertain. Although the government is happy to reap more than 57 billion euros in additional tax revenue compared to its autumn forecast, spending will also be significant.
No reduction in debt by 2027
According to the PLFR, public spending would exceed the level forecast in the fall by nearly 60 billion, notes the Court: “To the measures decided to compensate for the effects of the rise in energy prices (…) should be added measures to increase pensions and the salaries of civil servants, as well as the impact on the interest burden of higher inflation and health crisis management expenses ”.
So many obstacles to achieving the objectives recalled by Elisabeth Borne, Wednesday, in her general policy statement before the National Assembly: “In 2026, we will have to start reducing the debt. In 2027, we will have to bring the public deficit below 3% », assured the Prime Minister.
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