Public deficit: the Senate announces the launch of a parliamentary mission

The Senate Finance Committee announced on Wednesday the launch of a parliamentary mission on the deterioration of the public deficit and the “lack of information from Parliament” on the situation, in a sensitive context of budgetary slippage. While France's public deficit has skidded to 5.5% of GDP in 2023, the Senate plans to investigate this situation through a "flash mission", with the objective of "shedding light complete on the deterioration of public finances since 2023 and its monitoring by the administration and the government,” explained the upper house in a press release.

Dominated by an opposition alliance of the right and the center, the Senate had already exercised its control missions in recent days through a documentary control carried out in Bercy by the general rapporteur of the Budget, Jean-François Husson ( The Republicans). The latter will be the rapporteur of the newly launched “flash mission”. The latter will be chaired by the socialist Claude Raynal, who also chairs the Finance Committee.

After his visit to the Ministry of the Economy and on the basis of internal notes, the latter had been alarmed in recent days by a “withholding of information” from the government, already aware, according to him, of the coming slippage for a long time. . He thus affirms that the Bercy services estimated in mid-February in a note that the gap to be filled to comply with the public finance programming law was not 10 billion euros - the amount of savings already planned by the government - but 30 billion euros. “Only a lucid, objective and sincere inventory can make it possible to propose appropriate responses to the current situation,” said the elected Republican during a press briefing on Tuesday.

“Let us know how to read the entirety of the notes as they are transmitted rather than extracting pieces which do not reflect reality,” replied the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire. This announcement comes the day after that of INSEE of the public deficit for the year 2023, established at 5.5% of GDP compared to 4.9% initially planned. On Wednesday, the rating agency Moody's also deemed it "unlikely" that France would meet its objective of reducing the public deficit to 2.7% by 2027.