Public deficit: “France is not bankrupt”, tempers Pierre Moscovici

Red alert on public finances? While the executive is alarmed by the larger deficit than expected for 2023 and is looking for savings, the president of the Court of Auditors tempered concerns this Friday, March 22. “France is not bankrupt,” said Pierre Moscovici on BFMTV. France is a safe country, a very open country and therefore it is a country whose debt is positioned well, it finds people to finance it.

The day after a senatorial control at the Ministry of Finance which revealed that the government was considering a slippage of the deficit to 5.6% of GDP in 2023 - against 4.9% initially planned - Pierre Moscovici assured that "it does not there is no problem of debt sustainability. “On the other hand, we have a very worrying public finance situation and it is a credibility problem for us, particularly within the euro zone,” continued the former Minister of the Economy and Finance. We cannot stay in this situation.”

The government has drawn up a deficit trajectory “until 2027, which must take us below 3% of GDP,” recalled Pierre Moscovici. Therefore, “there are efforts to be made to reduce our deficit and especially to reduce our public debt,” he concluded.

The official figure for France's deficit in 2023, published by INSEE, must be revealed on Tuesday morning. During an “on-site” inspection in Bercy, the general rapporteur of the Senate Finance Committee Jean-François Husson noted on Thursday that the government was counting on a surge in the public deficit to 5.6% of GDP in 2023, 5.7% in 2024 and 5.9% in 2025.

These figures should nevertheless be taken with “caution” because they were calculated before the announcement of a savings plan of 10 billion euros in 2024 in state spending. The government is also seeking to generate an additional 20 billion in savings in 2025, this time by having local authorities and social security administrations contribute to the effort.