Budget 2025: Faced with a very unclear national context, the Gard departmental council is playing it safe

La capacité de désendettement du Département devrait franchir la ligne rouge en 2025. Midi Libre – MiKAEL ANISSET

The departmental authority should have significant recourse to borrowing to maintain its investment policy and is predicting a very complicated year in 2025.

It was in an unprecedented national context that the Gard departmental council held its plenary session this Friday, December 6. The session included a file of major importance, the budget orientation report (ROB). Problem: how can a community plan for the future when, at the highest level of the State, uncertainty has set in for several weeks and has turned into fog in recent days.

“Public service is the heritage of those who do not have any”

The overthrow of the Barnier government on Wednesday thus forced the teams of the departmental majority to revise their copy at the last moment to produce a budget that maintains a major ambition: “Do not add instability to instability. We have built a realistic, responsible and united budget”, supported the president Françoise Laurent-Perrigot who estimated in session that “the public service is the heritage of those who do not have one. Certainly times are hard, but it is precisely in these moments that we must stay the course. If at the highest level of the State, the existence of the departments was called into question, today we are showing our usefulness more than ever. Today, our fellow citizens expect us to know how to manage”.

And to manage is to foresee. The ROB rapporteur, Rémi Nicolas, therefore set out to present a budget in a context “where the State no longer has a direction and no longer knows which saint to turn to, not even Saint-Nicolas…” This touch of humor passed, the mayor of Marguerittes insisted on the “ambition” intact and the “control” of savings in 2024, despite an end of year where a deterioration and a drop in income are expected. And, without making any mysteries: “2025 should be more complicated…”, continued the vice-president. “It is estimated that 85% of departments will not be able to present their 2025 budget in balance, which is mandatory, supports the presidency of the departmental body.Inflation and government decisions (increases in imposed and uncompensated expenditure, cuts in revenue or tax autonomy) have weighed like never before on the finances and actions of local authorities, particularly departmental councils…”

A reality that was not contested by the speeches that followed the presentation of the report. The announcement of a €50 million loan to meet investment targets, the very, very significant increase in debt repayment capacity, from 5.6 years in 2023 to 17.1 years in 2024 for an expected return to 12 years in 2025 (departments must normally display a rate of less than 10 years per inhabitant) did not cause any tremors either. the assembly.

A budget that can be revised

And for good reason: while 65% of the Department's budget is devoted to solidarity – a sector for which demand never diminishes – the projected drop in revenue and the absence of a fiscal lever specific to the Departments make the community far too dependent on the decisions of the State, regrets Françoise Laurent-Perrigot, who nevertheless reaffirmed that “reinforced savings measures and scrupulous management, efforts made by all elected officials and agents in all areas, in a fair, equitable and united manner will be essential”. Christophe Serre, First Vice-President, noting that the management of the President, sometimes judged “timid” by her opponents, appears to the assembly as an asset in the face of future prospects.

If the budget may of course be reviewed and corrected by amending decisions throughout 2025, the Gard Department assures: “No abandonment of skills, nor of public policies, nor of our fellow citizens and our territories.”

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