Prime Minister Michel Barnier said in an interview yesterday that the fiscal situation is ‘very serious’. As most of France’s debt is issued on international markets, he stressed that ‘France’s credibility must be maintained’. He said that ‘I am not going to increase taxes on the French people as a whole’, but ‘I am not going to exclude the richest people from participating in the national effort that will have to be made’. In this effort ‘some very large companies, multinationals that are working well, can also contribute’. The composition of the new government was announced last Saturday, with 39 ministers, mostly from the centre-right alliance of Macron and Prime Minister Barnier’s conservative Republicans.
Opinion of the analysis team: Barnier’s new government must present the budget plan for 2025. The public deficit in 2023 amounted to 5.5% of GDP and the Treasury has already indicated that France will end this year with a deficit of 5.6%, far from the 3% EMU target. France has been under the Excessive Deficit Procedure since last July.
