Bruno Le Maire’s counter-attack on the slippage of the deficit | EUROtoday

Clike a sense of déjà vu. Bruno Le Maire, former Minister of the Economy, was grilled this Thursday, November 7 by the senators of the Finance Committee to clarify the deterioration of our public accounts. It had actually already been on the grill on the Luxembourg Palace within the spring, after the announcement of the plunge within the deficit in 2023 and the reassessment of the 2024 price range steadiness from 4.4% to five.1%. In June, the fact-finding mission on the slip-up delivered its conclusions, highlighting the federal government’s “recklessness” and “withholding of information”.

The Finance Committee determined to reactivate its data mission following the announcement of a deficit of 6.1% within the finance invoice offered by the federal government to grasp the implications of this slippage. “It is no longer an exceptional storm, it is a long-lasting hurricane,” underlined the overall rapporteur of the Budget Jean-François Husson (ex-LR). “I am no longer in office, I am no longer a parliamentarian, I am free […] I think that this will allow us to clarify a certain number of things,” the previous Minister of the Economy insisted in entrance of the senators to defend himself. According to Bruno Le Maire, for whom this listening to is an evaluation, after seven years spent at Bercy, and who spent 5 weeks getting ready, “there was neither fault, nor concealment, nor desire for deception”.

At the center of the budgetary slippage: decrease revenues than anticipated. After distinctive years of post-Covid tax revenues, they collapsed in 2023, then in 2024. This yr, the outlet needs to be round 41 billion. According to the minister, Bercy’s companies had nonetheless exercised warning. An evaluation contested by senators, who imagine that Bercy might have anticipated a higher backlash and warned extra rapidly in regards to the danger of slippage. The former tenant of Bercy additionally insisted on the “total seal” between the cupboard and the companies chargeable for forecasting income. A protection which was already that of Thomas Cazenave, former Minister of Public Accounts, when The Point questioned him in October: “Ministerial offices do not make revenue forecasts. »

“The Minister of Finance does not decide everything”

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Bruno Le Maire additionally contested the deficit determine of 6.1% offered by the present authorities, believing that further efforts might have been made to realize a decrease goal: “When I am told that the deficit in 2024 will be at 6 .1%, this is the choice of the current government. And I will provide all the evidence that we could have in 2024, with more rigorous recovery measures, a deficit around 5.5%. » While defending his desire to control public finances, despite his record (an increase in debt of 1,000 billion euros). “We resisted the deluge of additional spending that everyone asked for during the Covid and inflation crisis,” he mentioned. Before reminding us that he was not alone in cost: “Contrary to what I have been hearing for months, thank God, the Minister of Finance does not decide everything, all alone in his office in Bercy! »

Not sure that this will be enough to convince the senators, who are rather angry against the former executive. “We are here because the executive thought it knew better and succeeded better than everyone else,” Jean-François Husson instructed us a couple of weeks in the past. However, it’s mathematical: when public spending goes to waste, we remove revenues and we persist in our error, we discover ourselves on this scenario. » Thomas Cazenave can even be on the senators’ grill this Thursday afternoon, earlier than former Prime Ministers Gabriel Attal, Friday November 8, and Élisabeth Borne, Friday November 15. A fee of inquiry into budgetary slippage can even be launched within the National Assembly.