French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire attends the German cabinet’s weekly meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany September 13, 2023. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
PARIS, Sept 25 (Reuters) – France risks losing out on billions of euros in EU funds if lawmakers do not adopt long-term public finance plans, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire warned on Monday.
The French government wants to lock in its deficit and debt reduction plans out to 2027 with a binding multi-year law that would force lawmakers to work within hard spending limits when annual budget legislation is voted on.
With its 2024 draft budget bill due to be presented on Wednesday, the government is making a new push to get such a law adopted after lawmakers failed to pass one last year.
In the absence of such a law, France could lose out on 10 billion euros ($10.6 billion) in EU funds it is due to receive before the end of the year and a further 8 billion in 2024, Le Maire said.
“Without a public finance planning law, EU aid won’t be disbursed. We will have to forget about 18 billion euros,” Le Maire told the lower house of parliament’s finance commission.
The head of the finance commission, Eric Coquerel of the far-left NUPES coalition, said that opposition lawmakers should not have to give up so much power to legislate on the public finances and said it was not a foregone conclusion that the European Commission would deny France the funds.
Far-right lawmaker Jean-Philippe Tanguy said that while the government’s budget long-term planning was not entirely credible it was in the national interest to have it.
France has in the past rarely respected EU rules requiring member states to keep their public sector budget deficits to less than 3% of gross domestic product.
The government currently plans to cut its fiscal shortfall only gradually from an estimated 4.9% of GDP this year to 2.7% in 2027.
France’s independent fiscal watchdog said earlier on Monday that those plans were built on optimistic economic assumptions and lacked ambition when compared with other EU countries.
($1 = 0.9446 euros)
Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Hugh Lawson
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