“Calamity”, “unacceptable”… Oppositions crush the draft budget for 2025

“Calamity”, “unacceptable”… The draft budget for 2025, presented Thursday evening and marked by massive savings, is considered “austerity” by the left but lacking “breakthrough” for the far right.

This project is “a calamity”, estimated the leader of La France insoumise Jean-Luc Mélenchon, deploring “the 4,000 fewer positions in Education”. “After having spread poverty, here is the organization of ignorance,” he added on Fewer teachers compared to 2024, mainly in nursery and elementary school.

For the rebellious Éric Coquerel, president of the finance committee, it is a “super austerity budget”, which is “dark for the French, particularly the middle classes and the disadvantaged classes”.

The socialist deputy Philippe Brun, vice-president of the same commission, also denounced a project of “austerity with clear cuts in the most important budgets of our public services”. “We must above all not fall back into the spiral of austerity which will destroy growth, destroy jobs, destroy our economy,” he warned. He also deemed certain tax increases such as those on electricity “unjustifiable and unacceptable”. It is a budget “where in fact we take from the poor to give to the rich”.

“The effort is very poorly distributed”

The National Rally deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy, for his part, believes that he “does not see a break with the mismanagement of the last 50 years”. In addition, “the effort is very poorly distributed”, according to him, “since we identify at least 7 billion euros for the middle and working classes and only 2 billion euros for the most privileged. And that, for us, is unacceptable.”

Conversely, the group of MoDem deputies, a partner of the government, said in a press release that it was ready to engage in the budgetary debate “with a constructive spirit”. But he asked that these “cyclical measures” be “accompanied” by “more structural reforms”. He promised to propose amendments aimed at reducing “rent situations” and “windfall effects” in the name of “tax justice”. He also asked that the measures be “limited in time (…)”.

The deputy (Liot) of Guadeloupe Olivier Serva considers a reduction in the budget for the overseas territories “unthinkable”. “The overseas budget is reduced by 10%, it is unthinkable for our group”, “it is scandalous in a situation where Martinique is on fire”, he reacted.