Europe 1 with AFP 9:07 a.m., March 6, 2024

The public deficit will be "significantly beyond 4.9%" in 2023, the objective set by the government, due to lower tax revenues, warned the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, on Wednesday.

Bruno Le Maire insisted on wanting to reduce public spending, hence the recent announcement of 10 billion in budget cuts in 2024 which "are not a blow but an emergency brake", he said in an interview with the newspaper

Le Monde. 

These cuts, which target in particular the ecological transition, work or education, should allow the government to respect its objective of reducing the public deficit to 4.4% of gross domestic product in 2024, all under the watchful eye of the agencies. rating.

“At some point, we simply have to cool the machine, because growth is suffering the consequences of the new geopolitical environment and tax revenues are decreasing. When we earn less, we spend less,” according to Bruno Le Maire.

A first step

He repeated that this reduction in spending was only a first step, before a possible "amended finance bill in the summer, if necessary", then the need to find at least 12 billion euros of additional savings in 2025.

The government had to lower its growth forecast to 1% for 2024, compared to 1.4% in the initial budget - a figure significantly higher than the consensus of forecasters and which the High Council of Public Finances had judged "high" upon its unveiling in september.

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The savings plan was enacted by decree rather than via a draft amending finance law (PLFR), which would have obliged the government to submit these ten billion cuts to Parliament for approval, a perilous exercise for time when the presidential camp only has a relative majority in the National Assembly.

In the longer term, Bruno Le Maire recalls on Wednesday the objective of "a return to the deficit below 3%" in 2027, and says he is aiming for "a balanced budget in 2032", which "we do not have not known since 1974".

Bruno Le Maire before the Finance Committee of the Assembly and the Senate this Wednesday

Bruno Le Maire gives this interview to Le

Monde

while he must submit, alongside the Minister for Public Accounts Thomas Cazenave, to questions from deputies and senators in the afternoon.

They will speak at 3 p.m. before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, then at 5 p.m. before that of the Senate.