This is a decree published this Tuesday in the Official Journal. The initial 2024 budget in France was renewed identically in 2025 in France. “Following the promulgation” of a special law on December 20, this decree “opens the credits applicable to voted services to continue the execution of public services by renewing those opened in the initial finance law for the year 2024 by Parliament,” the document states.
Pending the adoption of a budget for the coming year, the government has extended to January 1 the commitment authorizations opened by the initial finance law for the year which is ending. In the presentation of its draft budget for 2025, the previous government of Michel Barnier indicated that this corresponded to state expenditure of around 492.9 billion euros.
These credits are higher than what was forecast by this previous executive, which was planning on savings of more than 7 billion euros compared to the initial 2024 budget, in the hope of reducing the public deficit. But the censure on December 4 of the Barnier government by the National Assembly prevented the promulgation of this draft budget.
The Minister of the Economy ready for “compromises”
Prime Minister François Bayrou said on December 19 that he hoped for the adoption of a budget “in mid-February” without being “sure of getting there”. He had indicated that he would start from “the copy that was voted on” in Parliament before the censorship of his predecessor.
Pending this budget in due form, Parliament adopted a special law in mid-December which allows the executive to collect taxes, spend credits on the basis of the 2024 budget and borrow for finance the State and Social Security.
This “special law” does not allow the traditional indexation of the scale of this tax to inflation. However, the French will not pay more income tax on January 1, 2025, the Ministry of Public Accounts told AFP on Tuesday. But the increase in income tax could however appear later, at the time of the income tax declaration in the spring, if no budget is adopted by then.
For his part, the new Minister of the Economy Éric Lombard will try to proceed “through dialogue” by inviting all the parties represented in Parliament to come and discuss the budget in Bercy, he announced last weekend. saying he was ready for “compromises” and anxious that a text “be adopted”. Its door “will remain open until January 14, the date of François Bayrou’s general policy speech,” but “also thereafter,” he assured the Tribune Dimanche.
The former director general of the Caisse des Dépôts also indicated that the deficit would be included in the text at “a little above 5%” of GDP, “in order to protect growth”. Before concessions to oppositions which did not avoid censorship, Michel Barnier announced the intention of reducing a public deficit of 6.1% of GDP this year, which earned France a procedure for excessive deficit in Brussels, to 5 % next year.
As for income tax, “we will have a budget which will include an indexation of the scale,” affirmed Éric Lombard. “The French who do not pay income taxes today will not pay any tomorrow,” he also assured.