Matignon sees pink after criticism from Gabriel Attal | EUROtoday

Who is accountable for the massive public deficit anticipated in 2024? The present Prime Minister and his predecessor could belong to the identical coalition, however they don’t have the identical reply. Since his appointment to Matignon, Michel Barnier has targeted on the scenario “very serious” that he says he has “discovery” arriving on September 5, and on the huge austerity plan that he’s getting ready to rectify the scenario in 2025. Gabriel Attal has one other studying. In his eyes, the Barnier authorities has its share of duty. This is what he defined on Friday November 8 within the Senate, the place he was heard as a part of an info mission on the drift in public accounts.

For the previous prime minister, now chief of the Macronist deputies, his successor voluntarily selected to not mobilize all accessible means to curb the slippage of accounts as shortly as attainable. According to Gabriel Attal, it was attainable to take care of the deficit of the State, native authorities and Social Security at 5.5% of gross home product (GDP) on the finish of 2024, topic to taking vigorous measures .

“This is what my government would have done if there had not been the dissolution,” he mentioned Friday. The deficit would subsequently not have fallen, opposite to forecasts. But it could have a minimum of remained on the identical stage as in 2023. If it in the end worsens to six.1% of GDP, as is now the official goal, “this is the government’s choice” Barnier, concluded the previous tenant of Matignon. Words judged “very inelegant” by the 2 senators who led the listening to, Claude Raynal (Socialist Party, Haute-Garonne) and Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains, Meurthe-et-Moselle).

“We did our best”

In Matignon, the phrases of Gabriel Attal and his Bercy ministers additionally make folks see pink. “The Prime Minister has only been here for two months, replies those around him. How can we believe that the deficit would have waited until October to explode? How can we believe that by cutting spending in November and December, we will make up for ten months of slippage? »

For months, the drift in public accounts has been at the heart of a political debate which is turning into a trial of successive Macronist governments, and in particular of Bruno Le Maire, minister of the economy for seven years, as well as his last minister of budget, Thomas Cazenave. How, after an initial slippage in 2023, could the public deficit worsen so much in 2024, reaching 6.1% of GDP instead of the 4.4% initially planned, a shift of around 50 billion euros? Before parliamentarians, Gabriel Attal and his ministers denied any fault or concealment. They implicate a “sudden worsening” of the scenario, a ” collapse “ sudden tax income, two shocks to which they declare to have reacted shortly.

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