2023-11-09 08:09:00
Published on Nov 9, 2023 at 7:00 a.m.Updated Nov. 9, 2023 at 9:09 a.m.
The passage in the National Assembly of the finance bill (PLF) for 2024 will not have improved the initial trajectory drawn by the executive. During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, the Prime Minister held the government accountable for the second part of the text, devoted to spending.
This new use of 49.3 made it possible to cut short a “particularly slow” discussion, according to Elisabeth Borne, and to invalidate the “billions of euros of expenditure” voted by the deputies who had “distorted the text”. Beforehand, however, the government had revised its copy, and retained 142 amendments (including 41 from the opposition)… which almost completely canceled the surplus revenue garnered in the first part of the PLF, adopted three weeks ago.
Objectives maintained
“We have created 200 million euros of new spending. But we remain 70 million euros below the budget balance presented in the initial text,” we plead in the office of Thomas Cazenave, the Minister of Public Accounts. The public deficit is therefore still expected at 4.4% of GDP at the end of 2024.
Bruno Le Maire’s objective of finding “1 billion euros in additional savings” compared to the initial project seems far away. Contacted, Bercy nevertheless ensures that it is maintaining this course – in particular thanks to the reduction in charges and the extension of the tax on energy companies. But the fact is that in recent days, the government has given up.
600 million for fuel checks
He first had to respect his own commitments. Faced with soaring gasoline prices, the executive announced at the end of September to renew the “worker fuel allowance” in 2024. Extended to the 60% of the lowest-income workers (and no longer 50%), at the request of the Horizons and Liot deputies, the measure will ultimately cost 600 million euros.
The same goes for the energy renovation of social housing – another commitment made by the government at the beginning of October – which will cost 40 million from 2024. Other expenses, more modest but numerous, are added: 5 million euros for the fight against bedbugs, 2 million for festivals, 30 million for the creation of anti-harassment brigades at school, 500,000 euros for the Shoah Memorial…
Small gifts to opponents
The government also made some concessions to the oppositions. LR deputies, for example, won their case on several amendments to support medical research (on pediatric cancers, Lyme disease or even chestnut parasites) for several tens of millions of euros.
Environmentalists have won 10 million for the prevention of risks linked to “eternal pollutants”; the socialists an exceptional Christmas bonus from 115 to 200 euros for precarious single-parent families.
Resentments at the Palais-Bourbon
This latest aid will be paid before the end of the year. Its cost (70 million) is therefore integrated, not in the PLF for 2024 but in the end of management bill (PLFG) for 2023. It is moreover to ensure the support – or at least the abstention – of the oppositions on this text that Thomas Cazenave negotiated at length the resumption of various amendments in the budget. The minister thus hopes to have the PLFG – which arrives at first reading in the Hemicycle this Wednesday – voted on without resorting to 49.3.
The maneuver should succeed. But it will not appease the resentment at the Palais-Bourbon. On the revenue side of the budget, the government had already swept away certain emblematic measures voted by deputies such as the tax on superdividends or on share buybacks.
Likewise on expenditure, the executive settled on several strong measures which had found a majority: the creation of 10,000 emergency accommodation places, the upgrading of AESH (which supports disabled children at school) and emergency aid of 271 million euros for organic agriculture (although supported by many majority deputies).
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