“Assumed fiscal irresponsibility”. and a “damaging wait-and-see attitude”. Previous governments were severely scratched on Tuesday by the conclusions of a Senate parliamentary mission on the “crisis in public finances”. the exploding deficit. Bruno Le Maire, Gabriel Attal, Élisabeth Borne, Emmanuel Macron… After several hearings, the Senate Finance Committee spared no one when it came to assigning responsibility for the major budgetary slippage that France has been experiencing for several months.

According to the conclusions of the fact-finding mission, all former leaders, whether in Bercy, Matignon or the Élysée Palace, are partly responsible for the widening public deficit, expected to reach 6.1% of GDP by the end of 2024, compared with the 4.4% initially forecast. This deficit would only fall below the 3% authorized by the EU in 2029, making France a bad pupil in Europe. “In addition to the general feeling of collective denial about the state of public finances, there is now a feeling of irresponsibility on the part of those who were in government at the time.”said the mission’s rapporteur at a press conference. “flashJean-François Husson (Les Républicains). “The government actually knew about the critical state of our public finances as early as December 2023. In our opinion, it should have reacted vigorously. But it didn’t.”echoed the Socialist chairman of the Finance Committee, Claude Raynal.

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“Short-sighted calculations

The two senators also believe that many months have been “lost” in restoring the accounts, due to the reshuffles and, above all, the dissolution, the premise of a “too long a wait for the appointment of a new Prime Minister”.. They also regretted the absence of a rectifying budget in the spring, decided in their view by “short-sighted calculations”. against a backdrop of European elections and the risk of censure. The upper house’s mission, carried out at the start of 2024 and relaunched in recent weeks in the face of a much more worrying deterioration in the accounts than expected, is drawing to a close just before the Senate takes up the draft State budget for 2025, which will be examined in the Chamber from November 25. And the French National Assembly is preparing to take up the baton: in the coming weeks, it will be conducting a commission of inquiry on the same subject.

This is a highly sensitive issue, in the midst of a high-risk autumn budget for Michel Barnier’s government, threatened with censure by the opposition in the National Assembly, where the government camp is in a strong minority. Hence the need for the Senate and its right-wing majority to lance the abscess as quickly as possible, in order to avoid a repeat of the previous crisis. “piloting errors. Another interest for LR: to differentiate itself from the former Macronist majority, at a time when the right is now part of the government coalition and is trying to justify its support for a highly unpopular budget, with 60 billion euros of effort required from all strata of the economy.

Internal notes

The two senators believe that government departments had information on the slippage in public finances as early as the end of 2023, and that the government was slow to act or communicate on the subject. In particular, they rely on various internal Treasury memos, as well as a missive sent on December 13, 2023 by Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire and Public Accounts Minister Thomas Cazenave to then Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, recommending that she communicate on “the critical nature of (the) budgetary situation”.. “The ministers have been talking out of both sides of their mouths”. between this internal memo, perceived as a “alert” by Mrs Borne, and their reassuring public stances at the time, the Senate mission is outraged.

During their hearings, the former managers denied any wrongdoing. “cover-up”all of whom have “under control”. and reacted swiftly to economic updates, freezing billions in appropriations. The explanation, they claim, lies above all in an error in assessing tax revenues, which were €41.5 billion below forecasts. Bruno Le Maire also laid some of the blame at the feet of his successors, criticizing the Barnier government for failing to “implemented” recovery measures prepared during the summer by the resigning team. Gabriel Attal had defended his former minister, criticizing a “outrageous political and media trial”. against him.