Dans plusieurs notes écrites entre 2022 et 2024, Bruno Le Maire, alors ministre de l'Economie, alertait sur les dérapages budgétaires. EPA – CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON
Le Figaro is exclusively publishing a series of warning notes written between 2022 and 2024 by the former Minister of the Economy and addressed to Matignon and the Elysée.
While the two former Prime Ministers Gabriel Attal and Michel Barnier are being questioned next week by the National Assembly's commission of inquiry into budgetary overruns, our colleagues at Figaro are exclusively publishing this Saturday the contents of a series of notes signed by Bruno Le Maire, the former Minister of the Economy.
In these missives, the latter, who is now being criticized for France's excessive deficit in 2024 (around 6%, compared to the 4.4% initially planned), which is weighing down the government's room for maneuver, warns, as early as 2022, of the risks of seeing public finances seriously slip. These notes were sent to the commission of inquiry on the public deficit on these slippages during the years 2023 and 2024.
“We must react quickly”
It all started in 2022. In November of that year, the former tenant of Bercy sent a letter to Elisabeth Borne, then Prime Minister. The evolution of energy prices worries him and risks weighing on the 2023 budget. “We are at risk on our budgetary trajectory, we must react quickly”, writes Bruno Le Maire.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000He did it again two months later, again in a letter addressed to the tenant of Matignon. “We cannot continue to endure, week after week, ministerial announcements of additional spending that are neither planned, nor documented, nor validated”, he complains. He has in his sights the attitude of Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior.
The circumvention techniques of ministers
He criticizes the latter for practicing a well-established technique among ministers: being presented with a fait accompli. Announcing increases in the press, without the approval of Bercy. “Darmanin is the king of maneuver, confides a former member of the government team, questioned by Le Figaro. For the 2024 budget, he completely cornered Bercy by announcing an additional billion in credits for the police”.
Bruno Le Maire also complains about the behavior of his colleague from Labor. “It is essential that the Ministry of Labor respects the arbitrations that you have made”, he writes to Elisabeth Borne. While the 2024 budget is about to be finalized, he complains again, in the fall of 2023, this time to the Elysée: “the savings on the Ministry of Labor are not implemented”.
Matignon and the Elysée remain deaf
Things are starting to get serious in his eyes. In the same letter addressed to Emmanuel Macron, he is concerned about the volume of additional spending planned for 2024: 10 billion euros. He believes that the political choices“take us away from our target of a 4.4% public deficit in 2024”. No effect. The 2024 budget is adopted as is, by 49.3. With a deficit of 5.5% instead of the planned 4.4%.
Bruno Le Maire then increases the pressure he puts on the executive and the president. “We are running a legal risk”, he warns in the spring of 2024. Neither one listens to him. To Gabriel Attal, who has become Prime Minister, he insists: “In the absence of a strong and rapid decision on the expenditure side, we are exposed to a real risk”, he writes, even going so far as to speak of a possible “financial crisis”. It is the beginning of August and the government has resigned.
Attal and Barnier to be heard next week by the commission
Nothing works. As he had done a year earlier, he will not obtain a supplementary finance law (LFR), in order to avoid a skid. “Bercy still swore that the 2024 deficit could have been contained at 5.1% of GDP, if it had been listened to”, writes Le Figaro. The hearing next week of Gabriel Attal and Michel Barnier is therefore likely to be tense, in light of these revelations. In a very tense political context, France's 2025 budget has still not been voted on. To the great displeasure of a whole section of the country's economic, political and social actors.