Budget 2025: what is the special law “ready” to be presented “at the next council of ministers” ?

The special law will allow the state apparatus to function in the absence of a budget. MAXPPP – Sebastien Toubon

The resigning Minister of the Budget Laurent Saint Martin explained on TF1 this Monday, December 9, 2024 that the special law to compensate for the absence of a budget on December 31 is ready.

The special law to allow the state apparatus to function in the absence of a budget is “ready”, assured the resigning Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin on Monday, adding that it would be enough to convene a council of ministers for the text to be presented.

“I have been working for five days since the censure of this government to prepare this special law that could be presented at the next council of ministers, it is enough to convene it for it to be presented”, he declared on TF1.

This special law, promised by Emmanuel Macron before mid-December, could be carried by “the resigning government or by a new government”, specified Mr. Saint-Martin.

It should make it possible to avoid the “shutdown”, namely administrative paralysis, by extending the budgetary credits for the year 2024 for the following year. It will also be used to collect taxes from January 1, 2025.

“The special law cannot index income tax to its scale on inflation”, the minister specified, citing a constitutional impossibility.

For their part, pensions will be indexed “whatever happens” by the social security code, synonymous with revaluation.

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“This censorship has a price”

The resigning minister has stressed the temporary nature of the special law, and the need for the next government to propose a new 2025 budget “as soon as possible, at the beginning of the year”.

“The French must realize that this censorship has a price. It has a cost for them since it is the impossibility of implementing all the protective measures, all the reinforced public services that were planned for their daily lives”, regretted Mr. Saint-Martin.

He called for the “collective responsibility” of elected officials, so that a “broader base of unity“, ranging from the Socialist Party to the Republicans, can “govern the country”.

A defector from the first hour of the PS within La République en marche, Mr. Saint-Martin considered that the integration of socialists in the next government would be “good news”, provided that there are “compromises of ideas”.

The pension reform could emerge as a point of friction: the socialists would like to repeal it, while the presidential camp and LR stick to their position.

“We will have to agree on the country's first expense, which is our pension system. How do we balance it out ?”, he said.

Finally, when asked about the possibility of seeing François Bayrou at Matignon, the resigning Minister of the Budget was very favorable.

“François Bayrou is a man of unity, a man of compromise, a man of union and who, for a very long time, has been warning about the subject of public finances and debt. So he ticks several boxes”, he judged.