“Navigation errors” or “responsibilities assumed ? Ahead of a commission of inquiry by the French National Assembly, the Senate seeks to understand the reasons for the budgetary slippage auditioning Bruno Le Maire on Thursday and Gabriel Attal on Friday, with the aim of “purge the abscess” ahead of the examination of the draft budget for 2025. The former Minister of the Economy will speak at 08:00 to the Finance Committee of the upper house, which is launching a series of hearings as part of a mission “flash information on the drift of public finances.

Former Minister of Public Accounts Thomas Cazenave will follow in the afternoon, before the former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday at 9:00am, and his predecessor Elisabeth Borne on November 15th. All will attempt to explain the explosion in the public deficit, which the new government expects to reach 6.1% of GDP by 2024, compared with the 4.4% initially forecast in the State budget, re-evaluated at 5.1% in April. “It’s normal to try to understand what happened and who’s responsible. Everyone has to take responsibility and say how the situation was experienced.” within the government, explains budget general rapporteur Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains), who is leading this mission alongside Finance Committee chairman Claude Raynal (Parti Socialiste).

At a time when the Senate majority, a LR-centrist alliance, has shifted to the “common base supporting the Barnier government, he is “necessary to purge the abscess”. before the 2025 budget is examined in the next few days at the Palais du Luxembourg,” says Mr. Husson. The senator from Meurthe-et-Moselle regrets that “real navigational errors”. on the part of the former executive and “a kind of entrenchment in the certainty of being right despite the figures”.while his colleague Claude Raynal has long been concerned about a “opacity of budget communication”..

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“Nothing has been hidden”

The two MPs, who already carried out the first part of their investigation in the spring, believe that the government had internal Treasury memos at its disposal at a very early stage, and that it was slow to take them into account. “In the seven years I’ve been Minister of the Economy and Finance, I’ve always demonstrated sincerity, honesty and a sense of truth.”Bruno Le Maire defended himself before the Senate at the time.

In recent weeks, after stepping down from his political post, he had promised to respond “in full transparency” to parliamentarians’ questions, after assuring France 2 that “the truth will come out later”.. “He assumes all his responsibilities. In the face of the torrent of lies that has hit him, he will do his utmost to set the record straight. People may want to distort them, but nothing has been hidden”.insisted the former minister’s entourage to AFP.

Another parliamentarian close to “BLM” also assures us of an awareness of the accelerating deficit, recalling that Bercy had reacted “by cancelling 10 billion euros in appropriations in February and proposing a rectifying finance bill in the spring”.but failed to convince the executive on the latter point. In early October, it was Gabriel Attal who sharpened his arguments, claiming to have prepared a 2025 budget incorporating “fifteen billion in savings”. before handing over to Michel Barnier. “In eight months we have identified or achieved 40 billion euros in savings”.he pleaded.

These hearings in the Senate foreshadow another crucial meeting with the National Assembly’s Finance Committee, which has given itself the extended powers of a commission of inquiry for six months to examine the same issue. Three deputies will lead the work: a chairman (Eric Coquerel, LFI) and two rapporteurs, Eric Ciotti (UDR) for the opposition and Mathieu Lefèvre (EPR) for the relative majority.