2023-10-23 13:00:06
The episode still makes him smile. It was almost ten years ago, Louis Margueritte was not yet a Renaissance deputy. A young polytechnician, he then worked at the Treasury, the most powerful of Bercy’s administrations and the heart of its ideological matrix. “During a meeting, there was someone who wanted to name “degrowth” one of the work scenarios…, he remembers. I can tell you that this one did not come back to the minister! At the time, it made everyone laugh, it didn’t stop us from talking about it, but I’m pretty sure that in the final note, the word degrowth was not mentioned. »
For a long time, the Ministry of Finance was seen as holding back issues of ecological transition, themselves considered a source of expenditure for public finances already under strain. However, a few weeks ago, the Treasury created a new sub-directorate responsible for the subject and staffed by twenty-five people, half of whom were assigned to newly created positions. A small event: it had been twenty years since this administration had modified its organization. And as Mr. Margueritte summarizes: “The Treasury is a large staff directorate. There is not a euro that walks around the Republic without them having their say. » To the point that other departments at Bercy are sometimes annoyed by the Treasury’s propensity to recreate within it what already exists elsewhere. “They duplicate everything! », summarizes a director of the house.
No wonder, then, that about a year after the creation of the general secretariat for ecological planning (SGPE), which the Elysée chose to house in Matignon, Bercy equipped itself with its own tool. “We were already working on the ecological transition, but wanted to strengthen ourselves, argues Stéphane Sorbe, who took charge of this new team in September. These are essential subjects, there are many economic and financial questions raised by the ecological transition. » In the opinion of several experts, the SGPE, which also has around twenty people, makes few savings and works instead on the question of resources. “The SGPE does planning, but does not decide on the instruments”, notes economist Philippe Martin, dean of the public affairs school at Sciences Po, who also sees Bercy’s initiative as a tactical movement. The Treasury, which generally has the upper hand over other ministries in arbitrations, “does not want to be satellited”.
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